News reports in Israel and from an Arab news source suggest that they did.
Israel has expanded its operations against Iranian targets to Iraq, where Air Force jets have struck twice in ten days, a report said Tuesday morning.
. . .
Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic-language newspaper published in London, cited Western diplomatic sources as saying an Israeli F-35 plane was behind a July 19 strike on a rocket depot in a Shiite militia base north of Baghdad.
The Saudi-based al-Arabiya network reported at the time that members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah had been killed in the strike. It said the base had shortly before the strike received Iranian ballistic missiles, which had been hidden inside trucks.
Asharq Al-Awsat also said that Israel was behind another strike in Iraq carried out Sunday at Camp Ashraf, the former headquarters of the exiled People’s Mujahedin of Iran, located 40 kilometers northeast of Baghdad and 80 kilometers from the Iranian border.
That strike targeted Iranian advisers and a ballistic missile shipment, the report cited sources as saying.
The report also mentioned a strike in Syria last week blamed on Israel, in which nine were killed including six Iranians fighting for the Syrian regime, claiming it was meant to prevent Iran from taking over a strategic hill in the Daraa province in the country’s south.
There's more at the link.
Of course, Israeli strikes against Iranian targets in Syria are nothing new; but to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time it's hit Iranian targets in Iraq. That's a significant expansion of hostilities. Israel is no longer waiting for Iran to move weapons into Syria; it's hitting them before they can get there.
We should also view this from the perspective of the burgeoning "tanker war" in the Persian Gulf. Iran is taking a hard line there, but these attacks are a reminder to its Revolutionary Guard that if they concentrate too much on one area, they render themselves vulnerable in another. Israel's "guarding the back door", if you will. I think, if Western powers launch strikes against the Revolutionary Guard in coastal Iran, Israel will seize the opportunity to hit them in other areas at the same time.
I'm also fairly sure that Israel would not have expanded its hostile actions against Iran into Iraq without first discussing it with the USA. I daresay there was at least tacit approval for its actions before they happened.
The Middle East is getting "interesting", in the fabled Chinese curse sort of way . . .
Peter
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