Iran Warned of Its Missile Strike Ahead of Time

Jan. 9, 2020 (EIRNS)—That there was warning of the Iranian missile launches on Jan. 8 sufficient to give U.S. personnel at the targeted bases time to take shelter in bunkers, seems pretty clear. U.S. military officials were warned about Iran’s pending ballistic missile strike “when the air defense systems went active” shortly before the attack was launched, a U.S. official in Baghdad told Fox News, likely referring to Iranian air defenses. The official also said that U.S. intelligence picked up “chatter” from Iran and inside Iraq, tipping off American forces to a strike around 1:30 a.m. local time, which was when the missiles were fired.

A senior U.S. official told Fox News that Iranian officials warned Iraq about the pending missile attack because Tehran did not want to kill Iraqi forces. Some Iraqi forces also warned their American counterparts, but the U.S. had already known “for hours” that Iran was planning to launch the attack. “That warning was not a surprise to us,” the U.S. official said. “We already knew it was coming.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi’s office confirmed that he was warned ahead of time by Iran of the impending missile strikes. “Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, we received a verbal message from the Islamic Republic of Iran that the Iranian response to the assassination of the martyr Qasem Soleimani had started or was about to start,” Abdul-Mahdi’s spokesperson said in a statement, reported Rudaw News. The spokesperson further stated that Iran had informed the Iraqi Prime Minister that “it would only target locations where U.S. forces were present,” without specifying the locations. “We immediately warned Iraqi military commanders to take the necessary precautions,” read the Prime Minister’s statement. During the attack, Abdul-Mahdi had also received a call from the American government, the spokesperson stated.