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How did Iran target a secret CIA site in Iraq?
[JPost] "Our new friends, the Iranians" A scoop at The Washington Post by John Hudson and Louisa Loveluck revealed that Iranian-backed militias were able to target a "secret CIA hangar" using a drone in April. This attack hit a hangar in Erbil in the autonomous Kurdistan region. This is a major escalation and shows careful planning and complex know-how by the Iranian regime and its militias in Iraq. It means that Iran was able to transfer the drone itself to Iraq and gather the intelligence on the apparent location of this secret site, which is inside a known US facility, and precisely set the drone to strike it. This kind of kamikaze drone is similar to the technology Iran used to target Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and similar to the kind of drones the Iran-backed Houthis use to attack Saudi Arabia and drones that Hamas unveiled in recent attempts to attack Israel. Iran has thus transferred its drone threats all over the region. The attack in Iraq is particularly interesting because US bases are supposed to have some sort of defenses against this known and rising threat. US CENTCOM head Kenneth McKenzie has warned for a year about the rising threats of drones in the region. He warned in March 2020, and again in February 2021. "We've spent billions of dollars in the Department of Defense on counter drone systems. I'm concerned that we're still under grave threat from them. But I'm also encouraged to see that your command has been experimenting with so many new and more effective counter drone systems," he told the US Senate in March 2020. Related: Erbil: 2021-05-30 Pentagon requests $522 million for anti-ISIS mission in Iraq, Syria Erbil: 2021-05-15 Erbil, Baghdad agree on joint deployment to combat ISIS threat: Peshmerga ministry Erbil: 2021-05-13 Iraqi Army Warns of Repercussions of Lockheed Martin's Withdrawal Posted by: Frank G 2021-05-31 |
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