Israel secretly built a military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and even launched attacks on Iraqi troops that almost discovered it, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials familiar with the matter.
The clandestine base was established shortly before the US and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran in late February, according to the report.
The US was reportedly aware of the installation, which housed Israeli special forces, served as a logistics hub for the Israeli Air Force and housed search and rescue teams in case Israeli pilots were shot down.
The outpost was nearly exposed in early March after a local shepherd noticed “unusual military activity,” including helicopter flights, and alerted authorities. Iraqi soldiers then went to investigate the site, but came under heavy gunfire. The attack left one Iraqi soldier dead and two others wounded.
Baghdad initially blamed Washington after security forces found evidence that foreign military personnel had been operating in the area.
“It appears that there was a certain force on the ground before the attack, supported by air, operating beyond the capabilities of our units,” Lieutenant General Qais Al-Muhammadawi, deputy commander of Iraq’s Joint Operations Command, told Iraqi state media after the March attack. “This reckless operation was carried out without coordination or approval.”
The base reportedly helped Israel conduct a long-range air war against Iran, whose territory lies over 1.600 kilometers from Israel.
Israeli aircraft carried out thousands of strikes during the five-week campaign, while the outpost in the Iraqi desert gave Israeli teams a forward position closer to the battlefield.
The IDF did not comment on the latest report, which adds to growing scrutiny of how Israel's confrontation with Iran has expanded into a broader regional conflict, drawing the US deeper into hostilities.
Former US counterterrorism chief Joe Kent, who resigned in protest in March, has accused Israel of pushing Washington toward a war despite US intelligence assessments that Tehran was not actively building a nuclear weapon.
Kent claimed that US agencies had warned Iran that it would retaliate by targeting US bases and attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz if attacked. He argued that the Israeli narrative about the Iranian threat ultimately “won the argument” in Washington, forcing the US into the conflict.
Trump administration officials have denied that Israel dragged Washington into the war. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said earlier this week that President Donald Trump acted based on “American interests” and his “America First” policy, dismissing the idea that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dragged the US into the conflict as a “false premise.”
