US Partially Evacuates Baghdad Embassy, Claims ‘Threat Linked to Iran’

Iraqi militias said to be moving rockets in range of US bases

The US State Department has announced a partial evacuation of the US Embassy in Baghdad. This will see all non-essential personnel evacuated, with the State Department confirming it is a “threat linked to Iran” that sparked the move.

This is a recurring theme as the US continues to build up forces around the Middle East, and continues to talk of a war against Iran. For weeks the Trump Administration has talked of Iran, or “Iranian proxies” potentially attacking US or US-related targets.

This of course centers heavily around Iraq, where the US has styled Iraq’s Shi’ite militias as “Iranian proxies,” even though they are formally part of Iraq’s own security structure. The US has repeatedly warned Iraq that the militias better not threaten the US forces in Iraq.

US hostility toward Iraq’s Shi’ite militias, and against Shi’ites in general has Iraq’s majority Shi’ite parliament calling for the US to leave Iraq, and the militias are unsurprisingly backing those calls. US officials are now claiming that those militias are moving rockets around in Iraq to locations where they would be within range of US bases.

With the US having gone to great lengths to define the Iraqi forces as “Iranian,” this fits neatly into the narrative of a potential Iran attack. The partial evacuation of the embassy just gives the appearance of one more US move toward launching a war.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.