Two drone attacks foiled in Iraq

 

Wreckage of one of the drones. Reuters via Iraqi government. 

Two drone attacks in Iraq targeting US troops have been foiled in the past 24 hours. Reuters. Both attacks involved a pair of explosive laden drones. The first was at Baghdad International Airport while the second was targeting the Ain al-Assad airbase. Separately, an airstrike was launched against targets in Syria due to an imminent threat. Troops in Iraq and Syria have been on high alert as Iran has made threats to attack them in revenge for General Soleimani, who was killed in 2020. Iran has said that unless President Donald Trump was arrested and convicted for the killing  they would take revenge. 

My Comment:

Pretty pathetic attack by Iran. Those drones got shot down by US forces and did not cause any damage. This is somewhat strange because Iran has launched successful drone attacks before, most notably in their proxy war in Yemen with Saudi Arabia. 

It makes me wonder if the United States has developed more effective countermeasures against drones. It's hard to tell from the pictures but it seems like the drones were pretty small but that could just be a lack of perspective. Either way, both attacks were foiled pretty easily. 

Even though these attacks were foiled fairly easily we should take Iran's threats seriously. They have a lot of experience with terrorism and non-conventional warfare and can carry through on their threats. Just because we dealt with these attacks fairly easily, that doesn't mean we would do so again. 

Obviously Donald Trump is not going to be arrested anytime soon for killing Soleimani. I am sure some Democrats would approve of that, but it wouldn't be based on anything but petty revenge. Soleimani's killing was obviously justified due to his terrorist actions and it's insane to demand Trump's arrest. And obviously the political ramifications of doing so are extreme. If Biden were to try and arrest Trump for Soleimani it would not go well for him to say the least. 

I don't think these attacks are really about Soleimani. Iran is trying to leverage the United States into a new nuclear deal. The old one was canceled by President Trump, another reason that Iran hates him. The sanctions put into place have hurt Iran's economy and they want the international cover to develop the weapons without the threat of being attacked by the United States. I don't think that they will get what they want as Iran isn't even on Biden's radar right now. 

I do have to wonder why we still have troops in Iraq and Syria. The troops were deployed there to fight ISIS but ISIS is long gone. They are not really a threat anymore in Iraq and Syria and I don't see them coming back anytime soon. My guess is that they are there to deter Iran and that clearly isn't working. If it were up to me I would pull these troops out.