Alissa Rubin, a highly knowledgeable and experienced foreign correspondent for the NY Times, has compiled a compelling narrative of the events that nearly led the US and Iran into open war.
It wasn’t Iran-backed Iraqi forces that attacked the US embassy in Iraq with rockets, according to her sources. It was ISIS :
The white Kia pickup turned off the desert road and rumbled onto a dirt track, stopping near a marsh. Soon there was a flash and a ripping sound as the first of the rockets fired from the truck soared toward Iraq’s K-1 military base.
The rockets wounded six people and killed an American contractor, setting off a chain of events that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war.
The United States blamed an Iraqi militia with close ties to Iran and bombed five of the group’s bases. Angry Iraqis then stormed the American Embassy. The United States then killed Iran’s top general. Iran then fired missiles at American forces and mistakenly shot down a passenger jet, killing 176 people.
But Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started the spiral of events, saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack, Khataib Hezbollah, carried it out.
Iraqi officials acknowledge that they have no direct evidence tying the Dec. 27 rocket attack to one group or another. And elements of Iraq’s security forces have close ties to Iran, which might make them reluctant to blame an Iranian-linked force.
American officials insist that they have solid evidence that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, though they have not made it public.
Iraqi officials say their doubts are based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place.
The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.
Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.
The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces.
And the abandoned Kia pickup was found was less than 1,000 feet from the site of an ISIS execution in September of five Shiite buffalo herders.
Why does this smell like the truth? Because an ISIS-based attack in Iraq wouldn’t serve Trump’s narrative that ISIS was defeated. Because an Iran-based attack provided a too-perfect excuse to counter-attack Iran.
There is no way to know for sure. What is certainly the case is that Donald Trump’s government lies about everything. There is no reason, without evidence (which Trump will not provide), to accept that Iran was behind these rocket attacks.
And, if you read the article, which you really should, there is every reason to suspect that this was an attack by ISIS. But that wasn’t useful to Trump. Instead, he blamed Iran as part of a Wag the Dog strategy to distract from his impeachment. And we nearly went to war.