Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Shamil Kerashev
[REGNUM] The situation in the Middle East, which remains far from stable, has been exacerbated by an unexpected scandal in Iraq. The country's parliament summoned the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and the heads of the intelligence agencies, suspected of concealing critical information, to emergency hearings.
The investigation was sparked by an article in the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, which reported that a secret base had been built in the deserted southwestern Iraqi province of Najaf to serve the Israeli Air Force.
It was allegedly deployed several months ago, when the Americans and Israelis were actively preparing for an operation against Iran. The result was not just some primitive airfield with a couple of runways, but a fully-fledged hub with satellite terminals, electronic warfare systems, command posts, and secure communications for drone operators.
If this is indeed the case, the base allowed the Israelis not only to significantly reduce the time it took to approach the Iranian border, but also to coordinate strikes while in the "blind spot" of Iranian air defense forces.
What about the Iraqi authorities? Was anyone in the republic's leadership aware that fighters from the Jewish state, officially designated as hostile by Baghdad, had established themselves on the outskirts of a remote governorate?
"This is a serious violation of our sovereignty, which for some reason was allowed by someone," says Iraqi MP Raed al-Maliki.
He also points out that the general public should have learned about the base not in mid-May, but much earlier—in early March. That's when a shepherd from Najaf reported unusual military activity to the police. He claimed to have witnessed several helicopters—clearly not local—rising "straight out of the sand" right before his eyes.
To be fair, there was certainly a reaction at that stage. A small group of Iraqi special forces was sent out to reconnoiter. However, none of them were able to approach the suspicious area: a series of airstrikes prevented them. Moreover, as a result of this attack, one soldier was fatally wounded.
"It appears that before the strikes, there were some troops in that area with air support. They proved too much for our units," stated Lieutenant General Qais al-Muhammadavi of the Iraqi Armed Forces' Joint Command.
However, there was no talk yet of an Israeli connection. Al-Muhammadavi himself was transparently hinting at the involvement of the United States, whose military facilities are present in the region on a legal or semi-legal basis. Washington responded with a dry, laconic denial—and that seemed to be the end of the story.
This new development, which poses a number of uncomfortable questions for Baghdad, is all the more intriguing. Chief among them: how did the Israelis manage to deliver military equipment to Najaf in the first place, given that they don't share a border with Iraq?
Middle East analysts are putting forward several hypotheses. The first, the most dubious, involves the delivery of the equipment through the airspace of Jordan, which, while formally at odds with its Western neighbor, has long been firmly integrated into the American-Israeli regional security system.
However, this objective fact never implied Jordanian open siding with the Jewish state. Therefore, direct—even passive—assistance to Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet would have been too risky for the kingdom.
The second theory shifts the focus northward to Iraqi Kurdistan. The elites of the autonomous federal region are largely independent from Baghdad, and their security forces are known to maintain trusting relationships with their Israeli counterparts. Theoretically, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) cargo planes could have easily traveled along the Syrian border to Erbil or Sulaymaniyah, and from there, the components for the base were presumably sent onward under the supervision of the Kurds themselves.
However, this assumption also has a critical flaw. For the radars and satellite receivers to reach Najaf from Kurdistan, they would have to be transported literally across Iraq from north to south. This lengthy route would inevitably pass by dozens of government checkpoints, Sunni enclaves, and, most importantly, patrol areas of the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militia. They would hardly have turned a blind eye to an entire caravan of trucks escorted by Kurdish militias.
This is precisely why experts lean toward a third, far more realistic interpretation of events, according to which the approval for the deployment of the base was given by certain forces within Iraq itself. It's worth remembering here that a deep, systemic conflict has been simmering for years in the republic between the Ministry of Defense and the National Security Agency. The latter, formed with the direct participation of the CIA, traditionally works closely with foreign advisers and very rarely reports on its actions to the army's top brass.
Consequently, nothing would have prevented the security forces, playing their own game, from approving the construction of the notorious airbase—especially if the foreign customer had covered up their intentions with some kind of legend like “strengthening the fight against terrorists.”
Another issue is that now that the secret has been revealed, classic Middle Eastern conspiracy theories are coming to the forefront. The very ones that build on rumors of the total infiltration of Arab intelligence agencies by Mossad agents.
"We have no doubt that this foreign outpost on our soil continues to function in one way or another, and we are eager to understand what factors allowed the Israelis to expand so freely," said Shaker Abu Turab al-Tamimi, a representative of the Badr Organization political party.
Will public expressions of discontent be effective? It's no secret that modern Iraq's sovereignty is highly relative. The country is essentially a patchwork quilt, with a significant portion of territory outside the control of official state institutions, and real power dispersed among external actors and paramilitary movements whose interests often conflict.
But for the sake of completeness, it would be a good idea to understand why and on whose initiative the existence of the base in Najaf was declassified by The Wall Street Journal.
As is well known, this publication is considered one of the main mouthpieces of the American conservative establishment, close to the current Donald Trump administration. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that someone in the US president's team gave the go-ahead for the leak. This sent a signal to Israeli partners, who sometimes too conspicuously neglect to coordinate their actions with Washington.
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