U.S. President Donald Trump warned Tehran on Wednesday against carrying out further terrorist attacks on U.S. troops and facilities in Iraq.
“Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq.,” President Trump tweeted. “If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!”
President Trump’s comments follow sustained attacks by a pro-Iranian terrorist group on U.S. military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq since the beginning of the year. The recent surge in missile attacks by Iranian proxy terror militia has prompted Washington to deploy the Patriot air defense systems in Iraq to shield the U.S. bases.
The Iranian regime intensified attacks on the U.S. and allies troops in December last year, culminating in the storming of the American embassy in Baghdad on New Year’s Eve by the Iran-backed terrorist militia Kataib Hezbollah. Following the attack, a U.S. airstrike took out Kataib Hezbollah’s founder Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with Qassim Suleimani, the chief of Iran’s Al Quds forces, the regime’s foreign terrorist arm. Both men were “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats,” the Pentagon later disclosed.
The Reuters news agency reported U.S. president’s comments:
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Iran or its proxies planned a sneak attack on U.S. targets in Iraq, and warned they would pay a “very heavy price” but gave no details.“Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!” Trump said in a post on Twitter.It was not immediately clear what information Trump was referring to in his tweet, which was posted after he was scheduled to have a 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT) intelligence briefing.U.S. intelligence about a potential Iran-backed strike in Iraq suggests it would likely be a deniable attack, as opposed to the kind of overt missile strike that Tehran carried out on Jan. 8, a U.S. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.The official said intelligence threads about a potential attack by Iran or Iran-backed forces had been building for some time. The official did not disclose intelligence on the timing or precise locations of any attack.
The coronavirus outbreak has crippled Tehran’s ability to carry out terrorist attacks beyond its borders, as the spokesperson of Israel Defense Forces recently disclosed. The epidemic has killed several commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s military arm, which also handles various Islamic terrorist groups across the Middle East. This, however, hasn’t stopped Tehran from staging terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.
The Iranian terror attacks come at a time when the U.S. has extended medical and humanitarian assistance to the country in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated the U.S. offer of help despite Tehran’s continued hostility.
“The whole world should know that humanitarian assistance into Iran is wide open. It’s not sanctioned,” Pompeo said on March 20. “We’re doing everything we can to facilitate both the humanitarian assistance moving in and to make sure the financial transactions connected to that can take place as well.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has responded to the generous U.S. offer of help by spreading vile conspiracy theories. He blamed the U.S. military for creating the Coronavirus, which first appeared in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, specifically to target the Islamic Republic by “using the genetic data of Iranians.”
The regime that put its people in harm’s way by operating flights into China amid a full-blown outbreak there is now covering up the extent of the epidemic by digging mass graves and arresting the whistleblowers.
“The regime has imprisoned dozens of Iranians for sharing statistics and forced hospital officials across Iran to falsify the number of cases and deaths,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said recently.
Mike Pompeo: the US offered to help Iran with coronavirus response
[Cover image via YouTube]
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