Israeli sources told Axios on Thursday that Israeli intelligence suggests Iran is preparing to launch a reprisal attack on Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days and that it could happen before the November 5 US presidential election.
The Israeli sources said the Iranian attack could involve a large number of drones being fired from Iraq. They said launching it from Iraq through Iranian-allied Shia militias could be an attempt to avoid another round of Israeli airstrikes on Iranian territory.
If another escalation starts from Iraq, US troops in the country and in neighboring Syria could come under attack since the US has vowed to defend Israel. There are also about 100 US troops in Israel as part of a deployment of a THAAD missile defense system.
A US official told Axios that the US doesn’t know if a decision has been made in Iran to attack Israel. Israel launched a series of airstrikes against military targets in Iran on October 26, killing four Iranian soldiers and one civilian. Iran has downplayed the extent of the damage to its air defense systems, saying it’s already been repaired, but Iranian officials are vowing there will be a response.
Brig. Gen. Ali Fadavi, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), told Al Mayadeen on Thursday that an Iranian response was “inevitable,” saying that Iran “can target everything the Zionists possess in a single operation.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a threat against Iran on Thursday, saying the Israeli military has “greater freedom of action” in the country than ever before. “The supreme goal I gave to the Israel Defense Forces and the security branches is to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Israel’s attack on Iran came in response to the October 1 Iranian missile barrage that targeted military sites in Israel, which came in retaliation for a series of Israeli escalations in the region, including the killing of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was visiting Tehran.
