{"id":26755,"date":"2026-03-19T14:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26755\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T14:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:10:07","slug":"us-helicopters-attacking-iranian-militias-in-iraq-top-general-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26755\/","title":{"rendered":"US helicopters attacking Iranian militias in Iraq, top general says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The war against Iran has spread to neighboring Iraq, where a top U.S. general says American Apache attack helicopters are battling Iranian proxies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Iraq, AH-64s [Apache helicopters] have been striking against Iranian-aligned militia groups to make sure that we suppress any threat in Iraq against us, forces or U.S. interests,\u201d Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a Pentagon news conference, Caine did not elaborate on how many combat missions Apache helicopters have flown in Iraq since U.S. operations against Iran on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n

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Nor did Caine specify which Iranian-backed militia groups U.S. helicopters have attacked.<\/p>\n

Since the start of U.S. military operations against Iran, named Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has been repeatedly attacked<\/a> by drones and missiles. The embassy issued a statement on Tuesday<\/a> saying that Iranian-backed militias have \u201cencouraged and conducted widespread attacks on U.S. citizens and targets associated with the United States throughout Iraq,\u201d including attacks on Baghdad\u2019s international zone, where the embassy is located.<\/p>\n

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For decades, the United States and Iran have been fighting a shadow war<\/a> that accelerated following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. The Defense Department has estimated that Iranian-backed groups killed more than 600 U.S. troops in Iraq<\/a> between 2003 and 2011.<\/p>\n

The undeclared war between the two countries has continued throughout the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State group, or ISIS, which began in 2014. U.S. troops have battled militia groups supported by Iran, including Kata\u2019ib Hezbollah<\/a> and Harakat-al-Nujaba<\/a>. U.S. airstrikes have also targeted facilities used by Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps<\/a> in the region.<\/p>\n

Following Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of Iranian-backed groups, began attacking U.S. troops in the Middle East. The group claimed credit for a January 2024 drone attack against a U.S. outpost in Jordan<\/a> that killed three soldiers.<\/p>\n

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Jeff Schogol is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for nearly 20 years. Email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com or direct message @JSchogol73030 on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The war against Iran has spread to neighboring Iraq, where a top U.S. general says American Apache attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[9911,94],"class_list":{"0":"post-26755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-adsafety","9":"tag-iraq"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116256245103898602","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}