Five Americans were injured and the US says it is judging who is responsible.
The Biden administration said it is still assessing who is responsible for a missile strike that injured five Americans and killed a foreign contractor working for the US in Iraq.
But it reserves “the right to respond at the time and place of our choice,” the White House and State Department said, amid questions about Iran’s role in another attack on US forces in its neighboring country.
Similar attacks during former President Donald Trump’s tenure led him to order the attack that killed Iran’s top military commander and pushed the region on the brink of war a little over a year ago – making the attack a new one. important test in the field of foreign policy was in the earliest days in the office.
According to Colonel Wayne Marotto, the US spokesman for the US-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State, 14 missiles were fired at Erbil Air Force Base in Iraq’s Kurdistan region late Monday night.
A non-American civilian contractor was killed and nine others were injured, including a US military and four US civilian contractors, Marotto said Tuesday.
“The administration reserves the right to respond at our chosen time and manner, but we will wait for the attribution to be finalized before taking additional steps,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
A little-known Iraqi militia calling itself the Guardians of the Blood Brigade took credit for the attack. Such Shia militias have links with Iran, the main Shia power in the region, although it is sometimes unclear how much control the Iranian government has over their actions.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the government was aware of the allegation but would not “base our conclusions solely and exclusively on the allegations of a particular group.” Instead, US intelligence is investigating the attack and US officials are working with their Iraqi and Kurdish counterparts, he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi on Tuesday and Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish regional government on Monday evening.
Notably, Price said on Tuesday that any response from the US would be “in coordination with our Iraqi partners”, calling it a “question of Iraqi sovereignty” – a break with the Trump administration.
In retaliation for an Iranian-backed militia who killed a US contractor in December 2019, Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general, and an Iraqi militia leader just outside Baghdad airport. His administration has not consulted the Iraqi government ahead of time, lest it leak to Soleimani, sparking protests and culminating in a non-binding majority vote of the Iraqi parliament last year to oust US troops.
Biden and Blinken seem to want to reestablish American ties with the Iraqi government. When asked about responses to Monday’s attack, Psaki said diplomacy “would be at the forefront of our engagement with our global partners around the world.” Likewise, Price dismissed questions about a red line or retaliatory attacks, saying it was “premature to speak of retaliation in specific terms.”
A senior Defense Department official also dodging questions about a US response, telling reporters that “people are studying the events that happened in Iraq over the past 24 hours” and “the situation and what makes sense from a US policy. perspective. “
But some critics say softlines will only encourage Iran to use its proxy forces against the US, especially in the run-up to possible negotiations on its nuclear program and more.
“Iran and its proxies are testing the seriousness of the new Biden administration as they make other regional gains,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a more aggressive think tank in Washington. “Cross-domain escalation has always been the name of the game for Tehran, whether it’s the Houthis, militias in Iraq or on the nuclear dossier at home.”
Molly Nagle of ABC News contributed to this report from the White House and Matt Seyler of the Pentagon.