BAGHDAD — An overnight drone strike on the home of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi drew wide condemnation Sunday as the contours of a potentially fatal attack became clearer.
The attack marked a major escalation in a campaign of drone and rocket strikes on targets in Iraq as armed groups use violence to raise the stakes of political decisions that threaten their interests. Censure followed swiftly. Iraqi President Barham Salih called the attack a “dangerous transgression.” The United Nations condemned it in “the strongest terms.”
And President Biden called on the “perpetrators of this terrorist attack” to be held accountable. “I have instructed my national security team to offer all appropriate assistance to Iraq’s security forces as they investigate this attack and identify those responsible,” Biden said in a statement. “The United States stands firmly with the government and people of Iraq as they strive to uphold Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.”
As political factions vie over the results of Iraq’s Oct. 10 election, and the government it will produce, Sunday’s attack left the country at a turning point.
Iraq’s military described the strike as a failed “assassination attempt.”
It was not immediately clear whether the drone had been intended to land as closely to the residence as it did.
Video footage from the prime minister’s compound showed that a vehicle in the parking lot had borne the brunt of the explosion.
The attack came as Iranian-linked groups intensify pressure over an election result that saw their political alliance suffer surprising setbacks. It won the largest share of the vote, but its share of the country’s 329 parliamentary seats dropped by almost two-thirds.
The lion’s share of the seats went to the party of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the populist leader’s recent moves have suggested that he may be preparing to agree to a government that marginalizes parliament’s main Iranian-backed alliance, known as Fatah.
On Friday, the alliance’s supporters clashed with security forces outside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone complex, home to Kadhimi’s residence and the U.S. Embassy.
Two people were killed when security forces opened fire on the protesters, who had rallied under a campaign that calls itself “Stop the Steal,” in reference to the election.
At least 125 others were wounded, most of them riot police, after the protesters hurled rocks that they had pulled out from the sidewalk.
Sunday’s drone strikes, which were heard throughout central Baghdad in the early hours of the morning, caused tensions to rise even further.
Kadhimi’s office said he had been unharmed by the strike, although several members of his security detail were wounded. But in video footage of the prime minister, who addressed the nation shortly after the attack, the faint outline of a bandage appeared to be visible under his white shirt.
Photographs from his residence showed that the drone had come close: Doors and windows to the premier’s home had been blown in.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Iraqi and Western officials have blamed previous attacks of a similar nature on Iranian-linked paramilitaries in Iraq.
These have targeted U.S.-linked installations and Iraqi intelligence headquarters, but never the office of a senior official. The Iranian-linked Kataib Hezbollah militia group is also accused of attempting to intimidate Kadhimi, who came to office promising to rein in the paramilitaries’ influence, by assassinating one of his confidants, the scholar and researcher Hisham al-Hashimi, last year.
A coalition representing many of the parties who lost out in the Oct. 10 election, including representatives of the militias, condemned the attack but claimed it was the work of unknown forces trying to sow chaos.
In a video published by his office Sunday, Kadhimi was seen leading a meeting of his security commanders about the overnight attack.
“The cowardly terrorist attack that targeted the home of the prime minister last night with the aim of assassinating him, is a serious targeting of the Iraqi state by criminal armed groups,” his office said in a statement.
The violence leaves Iraq in a dangerous moment as politicians and armed groups try to work out their next steps.
But experts said it may also present an opportunity for de-escalation.
“This may be the high-water mark of the violent aspect of this brinkmanship around the election,” said Patrick Osgood, a senior analyst at Control Risks who monitors Iraq.
“With the logic of violence that is increasingly dominating political activity in Iraq, there is also the potential now for a broad recognition now that this stuff has gone too far, and is unconscionable.”
Sadr, who has cast himself as a statesman in recent weeks, deploring the violence of his Iranian-aligned rivals and holding public prayers after an alleged Islamic State attack, described the drone strikes as an attempt to destabilize the country.
In the run-up to Iraq’s election, U.S. officials signaled that Sadr, a onetime foe whose Mahdi Army militia fought American troops after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, was seen as an acceptable bulwark against Iranian-aligned factions.
“The terrorist act that targeted the supreme authority in the country is a clear and explicit targeting of Iraq, its people and its stability,” Sadr said in a statement Sunday.
In the months before October’s parliamentary election, Sadr had also used the threat of a political boycott to delay the process, leaving Kadhimi’s government to fear that proceeding without his buy-in might also lead to street violence.
Politicians who have aligned themselves with the Stop the Steal campaign after losing seats in the election, including influential Shiite leader Ammar al-Hakeem and former U.S.-backed Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi, also condemned Sunday’s attack.
“The question for them now is what are they going to do,” said Osgood, the analyst. “Are they going to bow out of this Stop the Steal campaign and accept their losses for the sake of the state, or are they not?”
