How the U.S. Can Stop the Surge of Deadly Rocket Attacks in Iraq

In the early hours of Friday, U.S. and British aircraft conducted multiple airstrikes on the missile storage sites of the Iraqi militia group Kataib Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian group that was also hit by unclaimed airstrikes in Syria the day before.

Until Wednesday, when a rocket attack killed two Americans and one British service member on a sprawling base north of Baghdad, there hadn't been much noise from Tehran since its reprisal in early January after the U.S. killed Qassem Soleimani. This week's attack, which was meticulously planned and clearly not the work of the ramshackle remnants of the Islamic State, changed that. A truck with two rows of rocket-launching tubes discreetly installed in the flatbed, approached the base undetected and fired the rockets in one sudden salvo.

As someone who has gotten lost while walking around the maze of concrete barriers that make up the 15-square-mile Camp Taji base, I can attest to the great accuracy of the strike. Taji is massive, and the strike hit at just the right moment and just the right spot, probably guided by a drone or human agent.