Iran has reacted with concern to media reports of a clandestine makeshift Israeli military that was used during the recent war on Iran.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday: “We are not ruling out anything related to the Zionist entity in the region.”
“Anything must be taken seriously and this issue is important and will certainly be discussed with Iraq,” he added.
Israeli forces established a makeshift base using an old airstrip in Iraq's desert during the war against Iran, two security officials told AFP on Sunday, confirming a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Early in the war, which was ignited by joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28, the troops were detected in the Najaf desert in the country's southwest and clashed with Iraqi forces, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
Iraq has scrambled to address the reports. The parliamentary security and defense committee said it will meet with security leaders to probe “foreign military breaches and activities.”
Iraq’s security media cell denied that a new airdrop had taken place in the Karbala desert in what seen as an attempt to avoid directly addressing the reports about the alleged Israeli base.
Commenting on the western reports, head of the cell Saad Maan said they tackled an incident that took place on March 5.
“Iraqi security and military forces engaged in combat with an unlicensed force at a time, leading to the death of a member of the security forces and injury of two others,” he said. WSJ had not spoken about a new military deployment in the area.
Maan continued: “A search of the area last month and this month did not reveal traces of any unlicensed forces or equipment. Our forces will continue to carry out their duties.”
There are no “unlicensed forces” in any other region in Iraq, he added.
Hussein Allawi, advisor to outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, offered a different account of what happened.
Speaking to Al Arabiya, he said that the airdrop “aimed at collecting something that had fallen from the sky over the Iraqi desert during the US-Israel war on Iran.”
A shepherd who was in the area informed security forces of unusual activity. The forces then headed to the scene, which thwarted the airdrop, he explained.
He denied that Israel had set up a base in Iraq, saying the WSJ report was “inaccurate and aimed to stir up certain issues.”
On Sunday, the parliamentary security and defense committee said it will host security leaders to investigate “foreign military breaches and activities” in the border regions between Karbala and al-Anbar.
It stressed its “categorical” rejection that Iraq become an arena for settling scores or that it be turned into a platform for attacks against neighboring countries.
Committee member Karim Aliwi Al-Muhammadawi told the Iraqi News Agency that he had previously warned of the presence of US forces in the region between Karbala and al-Anbar.
He confirmed the shepherd report of foreign forces in the area.
“Preliminary reports found that efforts had been made to turn the region into a support point for military operations against Iran,” he revealed, saying the drone and rocket attacks would have been launched from there.
The committee will meet with the security leaders to further investigate the issue, he said. The government will take the necessary measures to tackle the violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
