Details are still coming in, but Iran has launched a massive missile attack against U.S. forces in Iraq, including Al Asad Air Base, in retaliation for the American drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian commander, last week. A major rocket barrage on Al Asad, which sits around 115 miles west of Baghdad, may have also preceded the strikes. U.S. President Donald Trump has already threatened a major response, including potential strikes on cultural sites, against Iran in the event of any such attack.
Al Asad, also known as Ain Assad, hosts a large number of U.S. military personnel, as well as significant numbers of fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and drones. It is also the base that U.S. President Donald Trump traveled to in 2018 in his first visit to Iraq. Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, as well as Iran itself and its other regional proxies, had vowed to retaliate against U.S. forces throughout the Middle East over the death of Soleimani, who had been head of the Quds Force, last week. The Quds Force is responsible for providing aid and assistance to foreign terrorist and militant groups and otherwise conducting covert activities outside of Iran.
The exact scale and scope of the attack is unclear, but Iranian state media has confirmed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of which the Quds Force is a part, carried out the attack. Reports say that as many as 10 ballistic missiles may have been launched toward Al Asad.
There are also reports that additional missiles were fired toward Erbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. U.S. defenses there may have shot at least one of these down. The U.S. military, as well as the U.S. State Department, makes heavy use of portions of the airport in Erbil and the U.S. consulate there is a major diplomatic facility.
There are additional reports of additional missile strikes on other targets in the country, as well.
Before the missile attacks, there were also reports of more than 30 rockets falling in and around Al Asad, but it's unclear if this refers to the Iranian missiles. There were reportedly attacks in total.
Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have been firing rockets at bases housing U.S. forces on a semi-regular basis for years now. An attack involving 30 or more rockets would be in line with an earlier attack on K-1 base in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in December 2019. That attack killed a U.S. military contractor and reportedly led to the U.S. government's decision to kill Soleimani.
All of these incidents confusingly follow apparently false reports of attacks on the consulate in Erbil and Taji Air Base to the north of Baghdad.
U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly monitoring the situation with his national security team. U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had just said earlier in the day that “I think we should expect that they [Iran] will retaliate in some way, shape or form" in the near term. At noted, Trump has already threatened to respond to any such Iranian attack.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
UPDATE: 7:30pm EST
The Office of the Secretary of Defense has issued an initial statement saying that Iran fired "more than dozen ballistic missiles" at "at least two Iraqi military bases housing U.S. military and coalition personnel at Al-Assad and Irbil."
Additional footage reportedly showing the launch of the missiles in Iran, as well as impacting in Iraq, continue to emerge on social media. Iran reportedly dubbed the strikes Operation Martyr Soleimani. The codename to launch the operation was reportedly Ya Zahraa, or "O! Zahraa," a reference to Fatimah al-Zahra, the youngest daughter of the Prophet Mohammed and a particularly significant figure in Shia Islam.
UPDATE: 7:50pm EST
Iranian media is reporting that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has fired another wave of missiles. This report coincides with news of possible strikes on Taji Air Base north of Baghdad.
There is still no word of any U.S. casualties, but there are reports emerging of Iraqi casualties.
Iranian media has also reported that the missiles the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has employed are Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missiles, which have a maximum range of around 186 miles (300 kilometers). Iran has notably fired Zulfiqar short-range ballistic missiles, a derivative of the Fateh-110, at targets in Syria on at least two occasions, once in 2017 and again in 2018.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com
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Iran Strikes Back: Missiles Rain Down On American Forces In Iraq - The Drive
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