Is the U.S. embassy attack in Baghdad part of an Iran trap?

Israel’s Chief of Staff has warned Iraq is becoming an ungoverned area where Iran is digging in and advanced weapons are being smuggled by the IRGC. “We can’t allow that,” he says. The U.S. has now drawn a red line in terms of the rocket attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq. Will Israel be tempted to see how closely its interests and the Americans’ now coincide in Iraq?

Clearly a new era has begun, but the potential clashes ahead span a large battle space from the Gulf to the Golan Heights with pro-Iranian forces located near U.S. bases and U.S. and Israeli forces both potentially acting against Iranian attacks.

Iran appears to understand this converging U.S.-Israeli policy. It has depicted itself as “resisting” the U.S. and Israel for decades and its attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and rocket fire at Israel near the Golan are calculated to provoke as well as to respond to U.S. and Israeli operations.

And if the end game is for the United States to pull out of Syria and Iraq, as President Trump appears inclined to do in any case, then Iran will have gotten just what it wanted.