Major General Kevin C. Leahy (L), Commander of CJTF-OIR meets with Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani (R) and Daniel Rubinstein (C), U.S. Chargé d'Affaires in Iraq. (Photo: Iraqi Government) On December 27, 2019, a U.S. forward operating base in Kirkuk, Iraq—K1 Air Base—was struck by 32 Katyusha 107mm rockets launched by Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iranian-aligned Shia militia group. A contractor who served as an interpreter for a SEAL platoon deployed to K1, Nawres Hamid—a proud father and a proud American of Iraqi ethnicity—was tragically killed in the attack.
Iranian militias conducted more than a dozen attacks on U.S. bases in the months preceding the K1 attack, but this attack was the first of its magnitude and was clearly intended to inflict casualties. Then CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie Jr. later wrote that this attack “was a game-changer, and it was obvious to me that we would be responding.” The U.S. did respond, and with force, leading to a back-and-forth escalation between the U.S. and Iran that resulted in the killing of Iran’s notorious Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and an Iranian ballistic missile attack targeting U.S. military bases in Iraq.
When the president delivered his speech following the missile attack, the SEALs at K1 gathered around the TV in their Tactical Operations Centre (TOC)—still scarred from the rocket attack—to find out if what began at K1 would catapult the U.S. towards a new military campaign against Iran, with them as the war’s first participants.
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