Iran-backed militias around the Middle East are intensifying attacks against Israel, the US and their allies, in retaliation for the ongoing joint US-Israeli offensive against Tehran as the war draws in new armed actors, threatening wider chaos and violence.
Israel and the US have targeted Iran’s network of militant groups, with Iraq emerging as a key front in this new and often clandestine confrontation.
Militia in Iraq have launched dozens of attacks since the war began on Saturday, targeting Israel and US bases in Jordan and Iraq itself.
In recent days, they have also targeted the infrastructure of Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups based in the self-governing Kurdish-dominated north of Iraq.
On Tuesday, in a sign of an intensifying war of proxies across the region, officials in Washington suggested they were considering mobilising the opposition Iranian Kurds, possibly for an invasion of Iran’s north-west region.
Maybe they don’t want to stop attacks on US soil, maybe they’re trying to encourage them. Maybe that’s how they’ll declare a state of emergency and cancel the midterms.
That’s very literally what I’m pointing out…