On Wednesday (Oct 18), two drones of unknown make were launched at a base in western Iraq housing U.S. troops. No damage or injuries have been reported as of this writing. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed credit for the launches as well as for a third launch on another base, which likewise caused no injury or damage.

Two drones launched at a base hosting U.S. troops in western Iraq were intercepted Wednesday, a U.S. defense official said.

Hours later, an Iraqi militia announced it had launched another drone attack on a second base. No injuries were reported in either incident.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias, issued a statement afterward claiming responsibility for the two attacks and saying it “heralds more operations” against the “American occupation.”   

The salvos came at a time of increasing tension and fears of a broader regional conflict in the wake of the latest Hamas-Israel war.

A statement from an anonymous source in one of the Iran-backed militias indicates that the Iraqi groups are preparing for a possible entry into the Israel-Hamas conflict as well.  Iraq, it should be noted, does not share any land border with Israel, Lebanon, or Gaza. Militia groups from Iraq, as with any Iranian forces, would have to transit Syria and/or Jordan to move into the region of the present Israel-Hamas conflict. Given current tensions between Syria and Lebanon over Syrian refugee deportations, it seems unlikely that the Ba'athist state would allow such transits. Jordan is a key U.S. ally in the region and is also unlikely to allow Iranian-backed groups to move through its territory.

Two officials with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, confirmed the attacks on the two bases Wednesday. They said the armed groups were on alert and prepared to join the wider battle against Israel, but that Iran had not yet given approval for them to open a new front. Leaders from some of the factions are now in Lebanon and Syria in case they get orders to proceed, one of the officials said.

Previously, Iran has seemed to be walking back some of their threats against Israel, in no small part because they lack much capacity to actually reach Israel and attack it, as noted above; their proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, however, are not so restrained. Last week, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah threatened action against Israel, and there have been some limited exchanges with the group, but so far, no other group than Hamas has engaged Israel on any scale.

While many militia groups in Iraq are also backed by Iran, there are also regional differences between those groups; they have not practiced working together on any scale, and if the drone attacks described here are any indication, any large-scale actions attempted by these groups are liable to be ineffective against formal military forces — like the Israel Defense Forces (IDF.)

Small, independent militias, however, are well-suited for harassment operations, such as random killings, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, drone strikes, and attacks on supply lines, and in so doing, can drain resources away from the main conflict. In this instance, Iran, by supplying financial and logistic support as it has in the past, will no doubt continue to be an enabling influence for anti-Israel forces for the duration of the war. The drone strikes launched by the Iraqi militias may have been ineffective, but they may also not be the last attempts the militias take.