A leading Iraqi militia said on Wednesday it had halted attacks on American troops, days after three US soldiers were killed in a drone strike on a base in Jordan that Washington blamed on “radical Iran-backed militant groups”.
“We announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces in order to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government,” said Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, secretary-general of Kataib Hizbollah, a Shia force founded in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
“We will continue to defend our people in Gaza in other ways,” he said in the statement, adding that the group’s fighters would be engaged in “passive defence” should there be any “hostile American action” towards them.
A Pentagon spokesperson said Sunday’s strike on the Tower 22 base had the “footprints of Kataib Hizbollah”. US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he had decided on a response, but also that the US did not “need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for.”
On Wednesday, the US attributed the attack to Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group which contains Kataib Hizbollah.
“We believe that the attack in Jordan was planned, resourced and facilitated by an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which contains multiple groups including Kataib Hizbollah,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
Experts say the IRI emerged after the October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza and has since taken credit for more than 160 attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria.
The IRI is part of the Axis of Resistance controlled by Iran that has targeted Israeli and US interests across the Middle East since the Hamas assault on Israel.
Asked to respond to Kataib Hizbollah’s decision to halt attacks on US troops, the Biden administration dismissed the claim.
“We certainly read it but we’re not going to take it at face value. We recognise that they are not the only group that has been attacking our facilities in Iraq and Syria,” Kirby said.
The US has responded with a handful of strikes in Iraq and Syria, including one this month in Baghdad that killed a senior commander in another Iran-aligned militia.
US officials say they are planning a multi-stage response to the death of the three service members, and are expected to target Iranian militia leaders in Iraq and Syria, among others. Washington has signalled it does not intend to strike Iran directly.
“We’ll respond on our own time, on our own schedule . . . the first thing you see won’t be the last thing,” Kirby said on Wednesday.
Biden has met his national security team over the past three days to choose an option, and implementing it has “a lot of moving pieces”, Kirby said.
Lebanon’s Hizbollah, another arm of the Axis of Resistance, has also clashed with Israel on their shared border while Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked shipping in the Red Sea.
Iran has sought to distance itself from Sunday’s attack, although experts say little doubt remains that the IRI was responsible. It took credit for an attack on a US base in Syria on the same day, just 20km from the Jordanian base where the US soldiers were killed.
Iranian officials have stressed they want to avoid a regional war and do not want direct conflict with Israel or the US. “We are not seeking war, but we are not afraid of it,” Major General Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Wednesday.
Tensions between the two foes have sharpened since Sunday’s attack, raising fears of escalating violence in Iraq, which is one of the primary staging grounds for tit-for-tat exchanges. While Baghdad has sporadically condemned the attacks on US and western forces, it has done little to rein them in.
Tehran yields unrivalled influence over Baghdad’s ruling elite, namely its governing coalition, which is backed by political parties and armed groups close to Tehran.
But those allies are divided over how to navigate current tensions. Some — including armed groups more integrated into state institutions — have quietly pressed the IRI to reduce attacks on the US, two people close to the coalition said.
“These groups are worried that escalation with America is not good for business,” said Renad Mansour, director of Chatham House’s Iraq Initiative. “They have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo in which they are consolidating state power and pursuing economic interests.”
Yet upstart factions in the IRI that are closest to the Revolutionary Guards want to continue their attacks in Iraq and Syria. They are being pressed by Hizbollah, which was also wary of fighting a full-blown war with Israel on Lebanese soil and would rather keep pressure on the US and Israel elsewhere, added Mansour.
Kataib Hizbollah, like others in Tehran’s axis, must balance domestic interests with those of its Iranian sponsors. In its statement, Kataib Hizbollah pointed to differences among “our brothers in the Axis [of Resistance], especially in the Islamic Republic”.
The mixed messages meant it was unlikely that attacks would stop. “There are too many chains of command, too many cooks in the kitchen,” said Mansour.
He added that there were “two competing interests: a desire not to escalate, but a need to respond, which is what makes this arena so precarious right now”.
Additional reporting by Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
