TORONTO -- With Iran vowing retaliation against the U.S. following a targeted airstrike that killed a widely-revered general, concerns are mounting about the safety of Iraqi civilians and U.S. citizens in the region, with one expert suggesting Iran has “no shortage of targets.”
Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq early Friday morning -- a move ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump without congressional consultation.
Former Iraqi ambassador to the UN Feisal Al-Istrabadi told CTV News Channel on Saturday that “this is a nightmare scenario for Iraqis.”
“There is a saying that … when elephants fight, it is the grass that is destroyed,” Al-Istrabadi said. “Iraq has now become the grass.”
Thousands of mourners chanted “death to America, death to Israel” in a funeral procession in Baghdad on Saturday. But ultimately what form Iran’s retaliation could take is still up in the air.
Al-Istrabadi said that the “red line for the U.S.” was crossed when an American contractor was killed last week in an attack that also injured Iraqi servicemen.
With this latest escalation from the U.S., the situation has become even more dire for Iraqi civilians, who could find themselves in the middle of a violent conflict.
“You can’t imagine a more significant escalation short of actual military action inside Iran itself,” Al-Istrabadi said.
After the mourning in Baghdad, rockets were launched inside or near the Green Zone on Saturday, an area that holds government offices and foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy. An Iraqi security official said there were no injuries reported in connection to the rocket launches.
“I think what we saw today is really only the tip of the iceberg,” global affairs analyst Michael Bociurkiw told CTV News Channel.
As for Iran’s vow of revenge, Bociurkiw said he doesn’t expect anything immediate.
“The Iranians will probably wait some time before they decide to retaliate -- and retaliate they will, very forcefully,” he said.
It’s a worry echoed by Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of the Virginia Tech School of Public International Affairs.
“If you look at Iran’s past history, they … believe that revenge is a dish best served cold,” Boroujerdi said. “So I don’t expect that they will necessarily take immediate action.”
Any action taken in the next few days or weeks, he added, will likely not be “the major blow that they wish to deliver to the U.S.
“I think the timing (for that) is going to be of their choosing,” Boroujerdi said.
“There is going to be political concentration, such as the upcoming presidential election in the U.S. and trying to embarrass President Trump the best way they can.”
SOFT TARGETS AT RISK
Of concern is that Iranian forces have a “very well-known tendency to strike at soft targets,” according to Bociurkiw.
Soft target is a term used to describe vulnerable, crowded areas that are difficult to defend, such as sporting venues, shopping malls, schools and transit hubs like subway stations, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Soft targets are often places where civilians gather or travel through in great numbers, making the death toll potentially massive if such a space were to be targeted.
The U.S. currently has more than 5,000 troops based within Iraq who were placed there previously to help prevent a resurgence of ISIS in the region.
Officials told The Associated Press on Friday that the U.S. is sending 3,000 more troops to the Middle East.
CANADIANS PULLED OUT
Meanwhile, NATO has temporarily suspended a training mission within Iraq that aimed at training Iraqi military personnel. The suspension affects 250 Canadian troops deployed in Iraq.
Trump said the move to attack Soleimani was taken because his administration had information that the Iranian general was about to target American diplomats and civilians. U.S. officials have not yet provided any evidence to support this claim of probable cause.
“I think many people in the (U.S.) administration were looking to do this in the first place,” former UN ambassador Al-Istrabadi said.
He added that there are those in the U.S. military who have felt that “over the 16 years (that) the U.S. has been in Iraq,” Iran has been responsible for the deaths of “several hundred U.S. servicemen … not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.”
Those individuals “were looking for this fight,” he said.
YEARS OF GROWING TENSION
The friction and mistrust between the U.S. and Iran can be tracked all the way back to 1953, when a CIA-backed coup overthrew Iran’s prime-minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and helped install Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Tensions deepened when Trump pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal with Iran brokered by former U.S. President Barack Obama and restored harsh sanctions, tanking Iran’s economy.
Bociurkiw said the unraveling of the Iran nuclear deal also contributed to the ongoing “division between America and its allies, including Canada and European allies.”
The fear for Al-Istrabadi is the impact on those caught in the crossfires.
“The possibility of both Iran and the United States being willing to tolerate a scorched earth in Iraq cannot be discounted,” he said.
Historically, Iraq has not fared well in conflicts with the U.S.
Although it’s hard to nail down an exact number for how many Iraqi civilians died as a result of the violence in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion, a 2013 analysis looking specifically at the period between 2003 and 2011 estimated that approximately 400,000 deaths could be attributed to the conflict.
According to the Washington Post, the death toll for American forces in the conflict during that same period of time was around 5,000.
“I fear that the U.S.’s attention is on Iran, not Iraq now,” Al-Istrabadi said, “and that it is prepared to leave a scorched earth in Iraq if necessary in its view.”
With files from The Associated Press
