In the midst of a global pandemic crisis and just when we don’t need a war, there are signs that we might get one. Another conflict in the Middle East is possible, one reason being that there are two regimes that badly need a diversion from problems with COVID-19 at home.
The context is this. On 3 January this year, a US drone attack killed General Qasem Soleimani, the most significant military leader in Iran. The Iranians retaliated with a substantial missile attack on Ain al-Asad, a substantial Iraqi air base a hundred miles west of Baghdad. Donald Trump immediately tweeted that this did little damage and killed no one – a symbolic attack that did not require retaliation. The extent of the damage turned out to be far greater than he indicated: more than a hundred US military personnel suffered traumatic brain injury, some of them badly enough to be airlifted to a specialist medical centre in Germany.
Even so, there was no further US action of any substance and the fears of a sudden escalation to a war with Iran subsided. This changed two weeks ago with a barrage of eighteen unguided 107mm Katyusha rockets fired at a large Iraqi military training base, Camp Taji, which also hosted many US troops and some from other coalition states. Two US soldiers and one British RAF airwoman were killed and others injured.
