Amid Iran’s ongoing targeting of neighboring countries, its state media reported Sunday that its forces carried out at least one drone attack on a military base near Baghdad, possibly on a U.S. logistical center there.
The report Saturday by IRNA, Iran’s official state-run news agency, said that the drone attack was on a “military base, located near Baghdad International Airport.” According to the AFP news agency, Iran launched at least eight overnight attacks targeting a U.S. diplomatic and logistics center at the location near the airport.
The report did not say whether anyone had been injured.
Iranian attacks were also reported early on Sunday by the defense ministries of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, two of the countries most often targeted by Tehran since Israel and the U.S. launched a joint military operation against the Iranian regime on Feb. 28.
Unusually, IRIB published a report on Saturday saying that Iran’s military had warned the residents of Doha in Qatar to evacuate for their own safety, suggesting that the Islamic Republic will pick up the pace of its rocket and drone attacks on Qatar.
But IRIB soon published a retraction and deleted from its website the report, saying it was “unofficial and published in error based on unverified domestic sources,” the Iran International news site, which is hostile to the regime, reported. IRIB apologized to its audience and said the post was promptly removed.
On Saturday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency also retracted its earlier report saying that Tehran had issued a sweeping evacuation warning for the Qatari capital of Doha.
The original reports were unusual because Iran has not issued a blanket evacuation warning for other cities it targets, and because Qatar has shown a more favorable attitude to Iran than some of its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf, and has been targeted far less than some of them.
According to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Iran has fired about 300 projectiles at Qatar compared to around 2,000 at the United Arab Emirates, approximately 1,000 at Israel and about 700 and 500 at Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, respectively. Bahrain has seen about 370 Iranian projectiles launched at it from Iran, according to the same source.
Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, met on Sunday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the Bahraini capital of Manama. Egypt is not among the 11 or 12 countries that have been targeted by Iran.
In addition to at least 17 people killed in Israel, Iran’s attacks have killed 54 people elsewhere in the Middle East, according to INSS. The attacks on Iran’s neighbors are widely thought to be part of an attempt by Iran to bring international pressure to bear on the U.S. and Israel to halt or scale back their strikes.
The Islamic Republic has targeted U.S. forces in neighboring countries, among other targets. On March 2, a projectile hit a British base in Cyprus, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. His country’s defense ministry later said the projectile did not come from Iran.
On Saturday, a Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles took position in the Arabian Sea, giving Britain the capability to launch long-range strikes if regional conflict escalates, the Daily Mail reported.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump and the Iranian regime traded threats, including of a major escalation in the U.S. and Israeli attacks—which have not yet targeted energy infrastructure—unless Iran allows free traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The maritime passage is a major artery for the export of oil and LNG from the Gulf states. Iran responded by threatening to cause blackouts across the region.
