US, Iraq warn Iran against attacks

US and Iraqi authorities warned Iran and Iranian-backed militias that any attacks on American diplomats or military forces here would be met with swift retaliation as the anniversary of a US drone strike that killed one of Tehran’s top military leaders ­approached.

“No one should underestimate our ability to defend our forces or to act decisively in response to any attack,” the top US military commander for the Middle East, General Frank McKenzie, said last week.

Calls from Iranian-backed militia groups for violence against Americans have increased in the run-up to January 3, the day last year that Iranian major general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, who was with him, were killed as they left Baghdad airport.

On Thursday, a pro-Iranian Iraqi news group on the messaging service Telegram published a picture of the US embassy captioned: “Remember always I can see what you are doing.”

The US strike that killed Soleimani, and an Iranian counterstrike against US forces with ballistic missiles, raised fears of open warfare in the Middle East.

Tensions gradually eased, but Washington and Tehran remain at odds over Iran’s nuclear program and its support for foreign militias.

Last month — days after a barrage of rockets slammed into Baghdad’s Green Zone, home to foreign diplomatic missions — Prime Minister Mustafa al-­Kadhimi dispatched a dele­gation to Tehran asking the government there to help curb attacks, according to Iraqi legislator Amer al-Fayez.

Read the article by Isabel Coles in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal).