Israel’s intelligence sees possible threat from Iraq as Iran’s influence grows
Tehran might use its growing influence in Iraq to use the country as a springboard for attacks against Israel, said the chief of Israeli military intelligence on Monday.
Israel sees the growing clout of Iran in the region as a threat, and over the past few years has carried out a number of airstrikes in the war-torn country of Syria, targeting suspected pro-Iran and Iranian militia bases that support the Syrian government.
Last time Iraq was an open threat to Israel was during the Gulf War in 1991. Following the fall of the authoritarian system in Iraq in 2003, Israel has worried that the Shia-majority country would side with Tehran and fall under the influence of neighboring Iran.
“Iraq is under growing influence of the (covert Iranian foreign operations unit) Quds Force and Iran,” military intelligence chief Major-General Tamir Hayman told a conference in Tel Aviv, quoted by Reuters.
The Iranians may “see Iraq as a convenient theater for entrenchment, similar to what they did in Syria, and to use it as a platform for a force build-up that could also threaten the State of Israel,” Hayman said.
Israel and Iraq have no diplomatic or economic ties.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister of Iraq, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, told reporters that a security delegation had met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, and hinted at a bigger Iraqi role in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria as the US plans to withdraw from the country.
Reuters previously reported in August, citing Iranian, Iraqi, and Western sources that Tehran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Shia allies in Iraq, which Baghdad denied.
The week after, Israel said it could attack such sites in Iraq.
Hayman believes that Syria in 2019 would witness “significant change.”
“This presence of Iran, with Syria’s return to stabilization under a Russian umbrella, is something we are watching closely,” he said.
Israel has been monitoring Iranian movements since Washington quit the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran in May and reimposed US sanctions.
“We assess that Iran will strive to stay within the deal but will do everything in order to find ways of circumventing the American sanctions,” Hayman said.
Source: Kurdistan24
