U.S. Strike in Iraq Sends Key Counterterror Operation Into Tailspin

The Pentagon is insistent that the Israel - Hamas war not spill over into the wider Middle East region. But already, the recent spate of attacks against American troops in Iraq and Syria—and the Biden administration’s response to them—are threatening to dislodge a precarious counterterrorism mission.

Iranian-backed proxies have carried out hundreds of attacks against U.S. entities and troops in the Middle East ever since Israel launched its bombardment against Gaza. In response, last week, the U.S. killed an Iran-backed militia leader , known as “Abu Taqwa,” in Baghdad.

Though the Pentagon claims the retaliatory strike that killed both Abu Taqwa—a high-ranking commander of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HAN)—and another member of HAN, was in self-defense, the Iraqi prime minister is now threatening to wind down the U.S. counter-ISIS mission in the country. A recent statement from the prime minister’s office said that Iraq is “setting the date for the start of the bilateral committee to put arrangements to end the presence of the international coalition forces in Iraq permanently.”

The growing anger in Iraq is a far cry from just one year ago, when Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al Sudani backed U.S. troop presence in the country indefinitely, noting that “elimination of ISIS needs some more time.”

The U.S. assassination itself was a bold move, experts say, threatening to send relations in the region into a tailspin, in what has already been a chaotic and destructive several months after Hamas’ attack inside Israel. From Israel’s bombardment and blockade of Gaza, to Iranian proxy attacks against U.S. entities in Iraq and Syria and vessels in the Red Sea, to fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, the possibility of a wider war is growing by the day.

“It’s a risky move,” Bruce Riedel, a former senior adviser on South Asia and the Middle East to four U.S. presidents at the White House National Security Council, told The Daily Beast. “You can never know how many people will be killed as collateral damage. You may know that your target X is in this area, but you may not know who target X is meeting.”

But it may have been necessary to send a deterrent signal to Iran to rein in its proxy forces’ attacks on U.S. troops before a wider regional war breaks out, says Riedel.

“We have sent the signal: Don’t escalate this. I think what we’re seeing from the Iranians is a message to their protégés, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Iraqi groups, let’s not let this thing get out of hand. Iran does not want a war with the United States.”

But others warn that, by going after proxies and blaming them for attacks on U.S. troops—and not blaming Iran directly—the Biden administration could be sending the message that it isn’t willing to hold Tehran accountable for its behavior.

“From an Iranian perspective… they see that the White House is willing to indulge their game of plausible deniability. The administration is prepared to attribute responsibility for the attacks on Americans… not to Iran, but to Iran’s proxies. And of course anybody with eyes to see can see that that's a ruse,” says Nathan Sales, a former special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and former ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism.

That kind of response could perpetuate Iranian proxy attacks in the region, warned Sales.

“When Iran looks at how the administration is responding to this wave of attacks, they think they’re untouchable,” Sales said.

CLASHING PLANS

It’s not clear that the Biden administration notified the Iraqi government in advance of the strike against Abu Taqwa. Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, when pressed on the matter, declined to comment.

But the United States doesn’t necessarily seem keen on ending the U.S. presence in the region.

Just last week the Pentagon was adamant that the counter-ISIS mission was still relevant. “No one wants to see a return of ISIS—which, oh by the way, just claimed responsibility for the attacks that… we saw yesterday in Iran. So our focus is going to continue to remain on the defeat-ISIS mission,” Ryder said, referring to a deadly attack in Kerman near the burial site of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force who was killed by the Trump administration in January 2020. (ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack; it sees Iran and its Shiite Muslim majority as apostates.)

The U.S. troop presence in Iraq has long been contentious. Four years ago, Iraq was on the verge of expelling U.S. troops after the assassination of Soleimani. Iraq’s parliament even passed a resolution to expel the U.S.-led coalition forces shortly after Soleimani’s assassination. Later, the United States agreed to reduce troop levels in the region, but thousands have remained.

Last month, the Biden administration warned that it would act if Iraq was incapable of protecting coalition entities. On an early December call between U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Al Sudani, the two “discussed the obligation of the Government of Iraq to protect diplomatic personnel and Coalition advisors and facilities,” a readout from the Department of Defense said. Austin added that the United States “reserves the right to act in self-defense against those launching any attack against U.S. personnel.”

But the Iraqi prime minister stated that retaliatory strikes don’t fit the bill for a training and advising mission, which is what the United States and other coalition forces are supposedly doing in Iraq.

“Engaging in military operations beyond these limits is viewed as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and is unequivocally rejected,” Al Sudani said at a press conference in Baghdad in late December.

And that was even before the Biden administration’s assassination of Abu Taqwa this month.

“We are in the process of reorganizing this relationship,” Al Sudani said in December. “With the presence of capable Iraqi forces, the Iraqi government is heading towards ending the presence of the international coalition forces.”

A White House National Security Council spokesperson acknowledged the Biden administration is in a conversation with the Iraqi government about the “evolution” of the mission, but declined to share more specific thoughts on the future of the counter-ISIS mission.

“We are engaged in a coordinated and deliberate process with the Government of Iraq to discuss the evolution of that mission in a manner that preserves these gains and helps ensure that ISIS can never again resurge,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “I don’t want to get ahead of that ongoing process.”

The United States has approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq to advise and train with local forces working to counter ISIS. Operation Inherent Resolve, which began in 2014, territorially defeated ISIS in 2017, but ISIS still remains, working on regrouping and recalibrating in the background, according to U.S. intelligence.

The recent attack in Iran, which Reuters reported was carried out by ISIS-Khorasan, an ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan , should be raising alarm bells across the region that ISIS is not yet under control, according to Sales.

“The fact that ISIS Khorasan was able to carry out a fairly sophisticated mass casualty attack involving multiple bombers inside Iran is a warning sign to Iraq that this fight is not over, that ISIS continues to be a threat,” Sales told The Daily Beast. “If I were at the State Department, if I were at DOD [the Department of Defense], that’s Exhibit A that I will be holding up to the Iraqis about why it would not be a prudent act of statesmanship to shut down our counter-ISIS partnership now. Because the threat is very real.”

PLACATING NEIGHBORS

It’s not yet clear if Al Sudani’s statements are meant to appease the Iranians, who are interested in the United States leaving, or about actually setting in motion concrete steps to wind down the counter-ISIS mission.

It may just be a shot in the dark to try to calm tensions for now, according to Sales.

“It may be that he means it, it may be that it’s just the sort of thing that he reflexively has to say to placate certain important constituencies in the wake of U.S. strike,” Sales told The Daily Beast.

The Iraqis have a tendency to tread slowly on these kinds of deliberations as well, according to Riedel.

“Iraqis have a well-established track record of going slowly. Of studying a problem, of setting up committees, debating what to do, and dragging things out,” Riedel said. “I’m not so sure this is an immediate objective of the prime minister. I think he wants to send a message to the Iraqi people that the end of the American military presence is on the horizon and we’re working towards that goal, but not setting himself a deadline.”

But Al Sudani still may be leaning towards ending the coalition’s presence in Iraq, Riedel predicted.

“From the Iraqi standpoint, I think it's always to the advantage of the government not to be seen to be dependent upon foreign military forces,” he said.

ISIS STILL LURKS

In recent days, Al Sudani’s justification for calling to an end of the coalition’s presence in Iraq has leaned on the idea that the coalition may no longer need to operate.

“We stress our firm position in ending the existence of the international coalition after the justifications for its existence have ended,” he said in a statement.

ISIS attacks inside Iraq and Syria have significantly dropped in recent months. In the third quarter of last year, attacks from ISIS were down 72 percent compared to the same quarter in 2022, according to the most recent Inspector General quarterly report to Congress on the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR). Its core revenue was down as well.

But assuming the ISIS threat is completely annihilated would be a mistake.

“We have to learn the lesson from the Obama administration, which is the minute the U.S. leaves, things can get really shitty really fast in Iraq,” Sales warned.

President Joe Biden, who as vice president under Barack Obama was tasked with presiding over the Iraq portfolio since 2009, including the drawdown from Iraq in 2011, is all too familiar with the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq too soon. ISIS surged soon after that drawdown, which led to years of strikes in the Middle East as the U.S. chased down ISIS leaders. And after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Biden is likely hesitant to mar his legacy by engaging in another ill-planned withdrawal, said Riedel.

“The Afghan withdrawal… the implementation of it was terrible. And the Biden administration doesn’t like to admit it, but it knows the implementation was terrible,” Riedel said. “I think he will be very concerned that if we are going to leave Iraq, it be done in a far more coherent [manner].

“Iraq is an issue Joe Biden has spent a lot of his career on. And he needs to get the final act—if this is going to be the final act—just right.”

It’s not clear that the Iraqi security security forces will be able to take on the mission against ISIS themselves. The security forces have been improving some capabilities, but still have “key deficits,” the quarterly report to Congress notes, including in mission planning, artillery, and logistics capabilities, as well as relying on the coalition for intelligence gathering.

As doubts swirl about the future of the counter-ISIS mission in Iraq, ISIS is still presenting a challenge for Iraq and coalition forces. Major General Matthew McFarlane, who was then commander of CJTF-OIR, said in August that ISIS seeks to resurge.

Just last week Iraqi security forces announced that they had arrested seven ISIS suspects in several provinces, including in Baghdad. The security forces conducted raids against suspects in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Anbar, according to the announcement.

While ISIS was territorially defeated in 2017, it remains capable of carrying out attacks, and its insurgency is set to “persist” in Iraq and Syria, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment from last year. ISIS continues to work to rebuild its ranks and capabilities, the U.S. intelligence report states.

ISIS still has between 5,000 and 7,000 members across Iraq and Syria, according to a United Nations report on the group from July.

Iran’s influence in Iraq will no doubt play a role moving forward. But Tehran itself is likely also second-guessing just how beneficial it would be to break apart the counter-ISIS mission.

”The Iranians do have a lot of influence, and I’m sure the Iranians would like to see the Americans gone,” Riedel said. “On the other hand, the Iranians have just been reminded of how dangerous ISIS is with the bombings in Kerman—and they’re probably also asking themselves, ‘Well, how much is ISIS on the rocks?’”

Read more at The Daily Beast.