Skip to main content

Iran: Missiles fired at Iraqi air base housing US troops

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran state TV says Tehran has launched “tens” of surface-to-surface missiles at Iraq’s Ain Assad air base housing U.S. troops over America’s killing of a top Iranian general.

State TV described it early Wednesday as Tehran’s revenge operation over the killing of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

U.S. forces could not be immediately reached for comment.

State TV said the operation’s name was “Marytr Soleimani.” It said the Guard’s aerospace division, which controls Iran’s missile program, launched the attack.

Analysis: The world Washington built is fraying. What comes next?

The United States is confronting a global security environment that increasingly resembles the outcome its Cold War adversaries once hoped to produce: a divided West, weakened alliances, economic exhaustion, multiple simultaneous wars and declining confidence in American leadership. That does not mean today’s crises were orchestrated according to some surviving Soviet master plan. The Soviet Union is gone, and the threats facing Washington now come from several different states with different interests. But the strategic effect is strikingly familiar. Early NATO assessments of Soviet intentions warned that Moscow sought to weaken the democratic powers, deny the West a secure European base and ultimately exhaust North America economically. Now, NATO says Russia is again trying to reconfigure the Euro-Atlantic security order through military force, sabotage, cyberattacks, coercion and disinformation. The difference is that much of the pressure now confronting the West is occurring simultaneously — and some of the damage to alliance cohesion is self-inflicted.
Read Next Story