Secret Israeli base discovered in Iraq

Set up just before hostilities broke out, the base served both as a logistics hub for the Israeli Air Force and as a staging post for its special forces, some 1,000 km from Tel Aviv. Search and rescue teams were stationed there to intervene in the event of a pilot being shot down over Iranian territory, a scenario that ultimately never materialised during the five-week air campaign. Washington had been informed of the site’s existence, but not Baghdad. When a US F-15 was shot down near Isfahan, the Israelis offered their assistance, which was declined by the United States, who carried out the rescue of their two airmen themselves.

The base was nearly discovered in early March. A shepherd alerted the local authorities to unusual helicopter movements, and the Iraqi army sent a unit to investigate on the ground. Sent off at dawn towards the site in Humvees, the Iraqi soldiers came under heavy fire that killed one man and wounded two others. Israel then carried out air strikes to keep the troops at bay and protect the operation.

The Iraqi government had condemned an operation described as “reckless, carried out without coordination or approval”, according to Lieutenant-General Qais Al-Muhammadawi, deputy commander of joint operations. A complaint lodged with the UN in March attributed the attack to the United States, which denied any involvement. Units from the Iraqi counter-terrorism service, dispatched as reinforcements, concluded that a ground force supported from the air had been present beforehand, “operating beyond the capabilities” of local troops.

The vast and sparsely populated western Iraqi desert has previously served as a theatre of operations for US special forces during the wars against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003. Tomer Bar, the outgoing head of the Israeli Air Force, had referred in early March in a letter to his troops to “special missions that can fire the imagination”, entrusted to his service’s elite units. The Israeli Air Force carried out thousands of strikes against Iranian targets during the five-week war that left thousands dead, mainly in Iran and Lebanon. Wall Street Journal

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