Iran-backed Shiite militias launched three drones at a US base in western Iraq. The attack is the first of its kind reported since Israel launched a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program, key leaders, military equipment, and other infrastructure on June 13, 2025, as part of Operation Rising Lion. As part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, Tehran’s group of regional proxies, the militias’ action risks drawing the US directly into the fighting between Iran and Israel.
The three drones were launched against US forces at the Ain al Asad Airbase in Anbar Province in western Iraq, two US officials told The Associated Press on June 14. US forces shot down the drones before they could reach their intended targets.
While no group has claimed credit for today’s attack, the only groups known to have conducted such attacks over the past several years are the bevy of Iran-backed Shiite militias that operate under the aegis of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI). Since Hamas and its allies launched their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the IRI has launched more than 180 attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan as of August 15, 2024, according to Scripps News. The IRI has deployed drones, rockets, missiles, and mortars in their attacks against US forces in the region. Additionally, the group has claimed to have launched scores of attacks against Israel, although most of these attacks were ineffective.
In one of the more significant attacks against US forces since October 7, 2023, the IRI killed three US service members and injured 25 in a coordinated drone strike on a base in northeast Jordan on January 28, 2024.
The IRI is a coalition of Iran-supported and, in some cases, -directed Shiite militias that act under a unified banner when striking US and Israeli targets. Operating under this front group, the IRI provides these militias with a measure of plausible deniability to shield them from international criticism as well as their direct links to Iran.
With at least 50,000 fighters estimated to be in their ranks in Iraq, these militias can serve as a strategic depth of manpower for the Axis of Resistance, Iran’s wider network of terror militias that includes Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and others. Many of the Iraqi militias have decades of experience in battling US, British, and Iraqi forces, as well as the Islamic State. Iraqi militias are estimated to have killed more than 600 US servicemembers.
Six of these militias in the IRI—Asaib Ahl al Haq, Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada, Harakat Ansar Allah al Awfiya, and Kataib Imam Ali—have been listed by the United States as terrorist entities and are directly supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF). Despite the terror designations, these militias have been integrated into Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which is an official, independent military arm of the Iraqi government that nominally reports to Iraq’s prime minister and is modeled after the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Today’s attack by the IRI against US forces in Iraq has the potential to draw the US into the fight between Israel and Iran. The Trump administration has stressed that it is not a combatant in the war between Israel and Iran and that it is only providing defensive support for Israel, such as missile defense against Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities. The Trump administration may overlook a single attack, but further strikes against US forces and interests throughout the region may change the calculus.
