Iraq Found Another Israeli Base; Netanyahu’s Secret War Is Spilling Out

Israel got caught treating Iraq like a spare runway, and now even the cover story needs air support. Right, so Iraq has apparently not just found one secret Israeli operating site in its western desert, Iraqi officials and lawmakers are now saying there was another one as well, because apparently one clandestine Israeli base on somebody else’s land was not quite enough to satisfy the region’s most heavily subsidised arsonist. [CLIP] Well there we are. Israel is accused of setting up shop in Iraq’s desert to support its war on Iran, the first site was exposed after a local shepherd reported unusual helicopter activity, Iraqi troops went to investigate, they were fired on from the air, one Iraqi soldier was killed and two were wounded. So before anyone starts hiding behind the language of temporary presence, staging area, operational support, logistical node, or whatever little Pentagon-scented phrase somebody has pulled out of the drawer to make an illegal war platform sound like a camping weekend, there is the blunt version. A foreign military force was allegedly on Iraqi soil, Iraqi soldiers went near it, and an Iraqi soldier ended up dead. And Israel has not exactly rushed forward to explain itself here, funny that, and the silence is doing a lot of work for a state that normally cannot shut up about its own military reach. The first site was in Iraq’s western desert, around the al-Nukhaib area, southwest of Najaf and Karbala, the sort of terrain that looks empty if you are a civilian and looks perfect if you need aircraft, special forces, deniability and nobody asking why there are helicopters in the middle of nowhere. But the story now widens because Iraqi officials are saying that first site was not the only one. Hassan Fadaam, an Iraqi lawmaker, reportedly said the one at al-Nukhaib was simply the one that got found, which is a hell of a sentence to be hanging in the air when the subject is Israeli military activity inside a country that does not recognise Israel and says it did not authorise foreign forces to be there. A second official is reported to have confirmed another base in a western desert region, without giving a location.