Iran-backed militias in Iraq are feared to have opened a new front against Saudi Arabia, after a second suspected drone attack in less than four days over the capital Riyadh.
A double blast was heard above the city on Tuesday morning. Witnesses said there appeared to have been some kind of missile interception.
A similar incident on Saturday was initially blamed on the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel group fighting the Saudi-backed recognised government in Yemen to the south. However, the Houthis denied it, although they have claimed numerous previous attacks on Saudi cities during the six-year war.
Instead, a new militia based in Iraq issued a statement of responsibility. The Alwiya al-Waad al-Haq, or Brigades of the Righteous Promise, said the attack had been “launched solely by Iraqi hands”.
An online news channel close to Iran-backed groups in Iraq said the attacks were intended to make Saudi Arabia the “playground of missiles and drones” and that it would become a target of the “resistance” from both north and south.
The Brigades of the Righteous Promise appears to be the latest of a number of shadowy militias that have sprung up in Iraq since the assassination by the US of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani a year ago.
He was killed on President Trump’s orders by a drone strike in Baghdad, alongside his Iraqi lieutenant, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, head of the Iraqi Kataeb Hezbollah group.
The new militias are presumed to be offshoots of existing organisations such as the Iraqi Hezbollah, in this latest case Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, which fought US and UK forces and kidnapped foreigners in the years after the 2003 invasion.
The older organisations have in many cases formed political parties, and the new offshoots would add an element of deniability both to them and to Iran itself, which continues to support them.
If the claim is verified, it suggests that pro-Iran militants in Iraq are trying to threaten America’s most important but also most vulnerable security partner in the Gulf as a way of putting pressure on the incoming Biden administration.
US policy in the Middle East stands at a crossroads. Mr Biden has promised to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, abandoned by President Trump as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, and to stop US support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, but also to secure American troops’ role in Iraq.
The same shadowy militias have launched repeated missile attacks on the Baghdad Green Zone, home to the US embassy, and on US and Iraqi army convoys. Bringing Saudi Arabia “into play” would broaden the threat these militias could pose if Mr Biden continues some Trump-era policies.
Alternatively, if the war in Yemen were ended, the Iraq militias would give Iran the ability to keep pressure on the US and Saudi Arabia for broader strategic purposes.
“There is little doubt that Saudi Arabia is facing an increasingly complex security challenge,” said Torbjorn Soltvedt, a regional analyst with Verisk Maplecroft, a risk consultancy.
“Riyadh is acutely aware that ties between Iran and many of the Iraq-based Shia militias are more established than they are with the Houthis. The Revolutionary Guard has overseen a significant build-up of missile capabilities in Iraq in recent years, and Iraq-based militias form an important part of Iran’s deterrence against Saudi Arabia.”
Meanwhile the Pentagon has confirmed it is making plans to spread its military presence in Saudi Arabia, currently based near Riyadh, to the western desert and the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
The Biden administration has pledged to continue to help Saudi Arabia defend itself, and a visit to Yanbu this week by General Frank McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, could be read as affirming that commitment.
In a related move, Mr Biden has suspended some sanctions imposed by the outgoing administration earlier this month on the Houthis, in response to UN and aid agency pleas that they would impede humanitarian supplies.
However, the US Treasury kept sanctions on Houthi leaders and said the suspension was for only a month, pending a “review”, suggesting Mr Biden is seeking a middle way between “maximum pressure” and what his critics are calling appeasement.