Recent US fighting with Iraqi militias has seen bases in the country hosting US troops coming under rocket fire, and this has led to the US trying to get more Patriot missiles into Iraq to intercept such rockets. The first missile systems are now set up, at Ayn al-Assad base, and in Irbil.
The US appears to be trying to move away from having troops scattered around Iraq, closing multiple bases in the west, and reportedly has missiles in Kuwait ready to be sent to two more US bases inside Iraq in the days to come.
Details on the diplomacy with Iraq on these deployments are unclear. The US has talked about wanting the missiles in Iraq since January, but it has never been confirmed that Iraq signed off on such deployment. Since the deployment is roughly intended to thwart attacks by Iraqi paramilitaries who are essentially part of Iraq’s security forces, this is potentially problematic for Iraq.
There was some speculation that the Iranians might object too, as these deployments also limit potential Iranian retaliation if the US starts attacking them again. That’s a concern, as it is by no means certain the US isn’t about to attack Iran, but since the US may well attack Iraq and its militias out of the blue, that’s probably Iraq’s bigger concern.
Yet another gift to the Iraq military when the Yanks bug out… Hey, yer welcome!
If I’m not mistaken, Patriot missiles are next to useless against the sort of rockets that ISIS has been using against US bases in Iraq. These are short-range rockets fired from within half a mile or so. So in reality, these Patriots are there to *try* to deal with missiles from Iran once the US starts attacking Iran.
Yet, we have some idiots here who *still* think this is all just a big Trump bluff.
Yeah, Patriots are useless against Katyusha-type rocket attacks.
As to why the Patriots are there, there are several possibilities.
One is that, as you say, they’re there to deal with missiles from Iran once the US starts attacking Iran.
Another is that they’re there to deal with missiles they expect or fear from Iran whether the US attacks Iran or not.
And a third is that they’re there for showy saber-rattling purposes.
My money’s on the third option, since there are limited numbers of Patriot batteries and any attack on Iran would involve real targets for the Iranians to take out, meaning they’d be unlikely to waste their own scarce missiles on completely irrelevant bases in Iraq.
Fourth, a high demand for those missiles means…gotta order more missiles.
Guess how many you have to order during and after an actual war…
Iran doesn’t have “scarce” missiles. They have the biggest missile arsenal in the Middle East. Their own deterrence strategy is based on missile defense (and a large asymmetric ability.) They can easily dump enough missiles on US troops in Iraq to cause significant casualties. That’s what the recent Iranian missile attack was intended to demonstrate to the US – which is why the Patriots are going there.
Unless you meant the US wouldn’t waste its scarce Patriot batteries on Iraq. But if the US intends to attack Iran, as I said, it needs scores of thousands of soldiers and aircraft on bases in Iraq – all of which will be easy meat for Iranian missiles. Which means Patriots will be necessary (even if mostly ineffective as demonstrated by Theodore Postel.)
Which is also why they’re in Saudi Arabia attempting to protect against Iranian (or Houthi, depending on one’s beliefs) missile attacks once the war starts.
No, this is option one. The low-level grunts may not understand that, but the neocons do. The neocons don’t do “saber-rattling” – they do war whenever they can convince a President to do it.
Missiles, like all arms, are scarce resources. There are only so many of them. If Iran doesn’t have scarce missiles, it has no missiles. Those are the two possibilities.
LOL Actually it’s relative to the number of targets you have available – and how much overkill one likes to apply. (And for the US, how much profit the military-industrial complex wants to make replacing the used ones.)
Revised data on Patriot missile operations against Scud attacks suggest that the US missile is not very good at that mission. It is hype and bluff.
If the US actually starts to believe its own fake version, it is likely to get hurt.
Another US illegal step, Iraq has not approved US Deploying Patriot Missiles in Iraq.
Since when does Washington obey international laws, it doesn’t even obey the US Constitution it’s sworn to uphold. The insanity increases every day.
i agree.
Since the author failed to make the point that Iraq has not approved US Deploying Patriot Missiles in Iraq, i felt to do it.
Once the upcoming false-flag event happens and the USA launches an all-out attack on Iran, those Patriot missiles might be effective against an Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel, but I doubt it. They certainly aren’t there to protect US troops as they will have been airlifted out days before it all comes down.
The near certainty that Iran and Hezbollah will be raining tens of thousands of missiles on Israel, overwhelming the Iron Dome, will make this the “apocalyptic, transformational” (Bannon’s words) conflict that Pompeo and the crazy Christian Zionists and Likudniks who surround Trump have been waiting for. The Sampson Option will end the world as we know it and COVID-19 will be the least of our concerns. Heaven help us.
US troops won’t be airlifted out of Iraq, they will be airlifted *in*. You can’t fight a war with Iran without a hundred thousand troops in Iraq, regardless of the attacks launched on them inside Iraq.
Initially, there might be some withdrawal of troops from Iraq. It depends on how many are there when hostilities begin and whether the US thinks an air and naval campaign will be enough to bring Iran to heel. But when that proves a forlorn hope, US troops will go back into Iraq because Iraq needs to be one big US missile and air asset base against Iran.
As will Saudi Arabia, and the UAE and Afghanistan (again).
The US will also be attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon along with Israel. So figure another ten or twenty thousand troops there to try to save Israel. And those B-52’s I talked about in earlier threats to bomb the crap out of Lebanon.
I suspect Iran won’t waste too many missiles on Israel. They have too many other important US and Saudi targets to hit. They can leave Israel to Hezbollah’s arsenal.
“You can’t fight a war with Iran without a hundred thousand troops in Iraq, regardless of the attacks launched on them inside Iraq.”
Sure you can. Depending on your objectives, you can fight a war with Iran without any ground presence in Iraq at all, or with a minimal ground presence protecting an invasion route that cuts south of Basra.
Any US ground war on Iran is going to be fought on a narrow front to reduce the Iranians’ advantage in numbers and maximize the US advantage in technology.
Keeping a substantial presence in Iraq, along a 900-mile border and surrounded by unfriendly Iraqis, would be as idiotic as Saddam’s long defensive line in Kuwait in 1991 that the US bombed the hell out of, then punched through along several narrow fronts and allowed to collapse behind it.
“depending on your objectives”… That’s the point. If your objective is to get somewhere, they’re going to be necessary.
Who says the goal is to protect the entire border? That’s what you have satellite surveillance and air-mobile force structures and overwhelming air superiority for. Any Iranian moves outside the primary concentration of US forces will be detected and US forces moved to counter. Whether that works out well or not depends on circumstances. Point is you don’t try to defend the whole border.
Not to mention that “defending the border” isn’t the task at hand – it’s to prosecute attacks on Iran inside Iran.
So yes, it’s going to be fought on a relatively narrow front. But the US is still going to need more than a couple score thousand troops.
If you want to fight Iran *effectively*, the US is going to need a hundred thousand troops in Iraq – first to keep the air bases and other assets from being overrun by *Shia militias* (and maybe the Iraqi army), and second to penetrate at least part way into Iran once that becomes a necessity – which it will, because US air and naval power isn’t going to be enough to end the war (not that it *will* end with a US victory but the Pentagon is going to try anyway.)
Will it be a mess? Oh, sure. But that’s what the neocons want. Because they don’t know any better.
So a Patriot battalion has 6 batteries of 6 launchers with 4 missiles each. So 144 shots. I wonder if Iran has 145 missiles?
Worse than that they may take two shots per incoming and certainly the efficiency isn’t 100% add to that the Iranians can shoot a whole pile of crap missiles up front to deplete the battery and on top of that might deploy countermeasures.
Looks like they will finally get to test it.
What about those drone things that took out the Saudi oil? Those fly low and slow just exactly what the Patriot isn’t designed to counter. Couple of those take out the radar or communications links.