Post by Admin on Jan 2, 2020 21:21:23 GMT
Iran is "not moving toward a war," but is also "not afraid of any conflict" with the U.S., a top Iranian commander said today via state-run Tasnim news agency and relayed to Western press via Reuters. That's the latest in U.S.-Iran tensions, which spiked dramatically on Tuesday when Iran-backed militias and their supporters stormed the outer perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — setting fires, throwing rocks and smashing surveillance cameras on the facilities. Those militia supporters are gone today, the Wall Street Journal reports.
BTW: The State Department advised Wednesday that if you decide to travel to Iraq, "draft a will."
Speaking of traveling, about 100 Marines headed to Baghdad and at least 750 U.S. paratroopers headed to Kuwait on Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced via Twitter dispatching the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team — with more deployments possible "over the next several days."
Video: airborne soldiers shipping out to Kuwait, via DVIDS.
Video: Marines heading out to bolster security at the Baghdad embassy.
CBS News's David Martin reports today: "an additional 3,000 troops were preparing to deploy to Kuwait, but orders for that deployment had not been issued as of Thursday morning." (Reuters reports separately there could be as many as 4,000 more U.S. forces headed to the region.)
Esper's justification: "This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today. The United States will protect our people and interests anywhere they are found around the world."
Sending these troops is a "prudent" measure "based on lessons learned over the past that we deploy additional forces to either reinforce that site or other sites in Iraq, and frankly any other location in the Middle East as this thing escalates, if it does indeed escalate," Esper told Fox News this morning.
Already, "More than 5,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq supporting local forces," Reuters writes. "The air strikes have galvanized calls inside Iraq to expel them."
What now? Esper told Fox, "I think it's time for the international community to come together and stand up to Iran." He didn't elaborate on how or when any such resistance to Iran might take shape.
How all this started:
Video: Marines heading out to bolster security at the Baghdad embassy.
CBS News's David Martin reports today: "an additional 3,000 troops were preparing to deploy to Kuwait, but orders for that deployment had not been issued as of Thursday morning." (Reuters reports separately there could be as many as 4,000 more U.S. forces headed to the region.)
Esper's justification: "This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today. The United States will protect our people and interests anywhere they are found around the world."
Sending these troops is a "prudent" measure "based on lessons learned over the past that we deploy additional forces to either reinforce that site or other sites in Iraq, and frankly any other location in the Middle East as this thing escalates, if it does indeed escalate," Esper told Fox News this morning.
Already, "More than 5,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq supporting local forces," Reuters writes. "The air strikes have galvanized calls inside Iraq to expel them."
What now? Esper told Fox, "I think it's time for the international community to come together and stand up to Iran." He didn't elaborate on how or when any such resistance to Iran might take shape.
How all this started:
link Dec. 27: A U.S. contractor was killed in a rocket attack at an Iraqi base near Kirkuk on Friday (CNN). It was the latest of nearly a dozen such attacks in recent months, as this Iraq tab reveals over at the Iran-watchers of The Long War Journal.
Dec. 29: Pentagon officials said the U.S. blamed Iranian-backed Shiite militias under the banner Kata'ib Hizbollah, and dispatched airstrikes on five of those militias' bases in Iraq and Syria. More than two dozen of KH's fighters are believed to have been killed in those U.S. airstrikes. (CBS)
The airstrikes then triggered some 48 hours of protests and increasingly violent demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. In that time, "An undetermined number of demonstrators reached the reception area, where guards screen all visitors to the embassy, before they were prevented from breaching the compound," a U.S. official told NBC News.
Then about 100 Marines flew to the embassy via V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Dec. 31: Tweeted President Trump: "Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities. They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!"
Tweeted Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in response: "You can't do anything."
Jan. 1: State Department issues "draft a will" travel advisory.
Said one protestor today: "Our sit-in is eternal, until this devil's den is closed off forever.
Said one protestor today: "Our sit-in is eternal, until this devil's den is closed off forever.
SecState Mike Pompeo postponed a trip to Ukraine this week in order to keep a closer eye on developments in Iraq, the State Department said Wednesday. (For what it's worth, that was Pompeo's second cancelled trip to Ukraine to speak with Kyiv's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.)
ICYMI: Pompeo, Esper and former National Security Adviser John Bolton met with President Trump in the Oval Office back in August to try to convince him it was in U.S. interests to release the ~$400 million in military aid to Ukraine — but Trump refused, the New York Times reported on December 29.
ICYMI: Pompeo, Esper and former National Security Adviser John Bolton met with President Trump in the Oval Office back in August to try to convince him it was in U.S. interests to release the ~$400 million in military aid to Ukraine — but Trump refused, the New York Times reported on December 29.
