‘They’ll likely regret it’
The Pentagon yesterday warned that the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah group that stormed the US embassy in Baghdad would carry out more attacks on US facilities -- and would regret it.
“The provocative behavior has been out there for months... So do I think they may do something? Yes. And they will likely regret it,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters.
“We are prepared to exercise self-defense, and we are prepared to deter further bad behavior from these groups, all of which are sponsored, directed and resourced by Iran.”
Several thousand Iraqi protesters attacked the US embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, breaching its outer wall and chanting “Death to America!” in anger over weekend air strikes that killed pro-Iran fighters.
Elite Iraqi troops were deployed to secure the embassy yesterday.
The unprecedented attack on the American mission in Baghdad -- in which intruders threw rocks, laid fires and graffitied walls -- sparked fears of a wider proxy war between Iran and the United States, both of them close allies of Iraq.
Supporters of Iraq’s powerful Hashed al-Shaabi military force laid siege to the embassy in outrage at US air strikes that killed 25 of their fighters, but pulled back on Wednesday after an order from the group.
The attack sparked comparisons with the 1979 hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran and the deadly 2012 attack on the US consulate in Libya’s second city Benghazi.
The violence has also troubled Iraqis who have taken to the streets since October in massive rallies denouncing government corruption, a lack of jobs and poor public services.
The largest grassroots protests Iraq in decades has seen tens of thousands flooding the streets across the capital and Shiite-majority south. Nearly 460 people have been killed and around 25,000 wounded in protest-related violence.
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