Wladimir van Wilgenburg

When U.S. Patriots shot down an Iranian missile over Erbil on 15-04-2024, Kurds wondered why such defenses weren’t activated when they were attacked

Late in the night of April 13, Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, was shaken by the sound of a Patriot missile battery shooting down an Iranian ballistic missile flying toward Israel. “One of those missiles was a ballistic missile that was taken down in the vicinity of Erbil that was en route toward Israel,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed in a press briefing.

This raised questions among many Iraqi Kurds about why the United States had not prevented an Iranian missile attack against Erbil last January 15, which killed four civilians in a villa, under the false pretext that it was a Mossad base. A businessman, Peshraw Dizayee, and his 11-year-old daughter Zhina were among the victims, and some wondered whether the Kurds had become expendable allies of the Americans.

Mohammed Salih, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, told me that the U.S. defense of Israel had raised questions among many Kurds as to “why the U.S. military has not so far used these advanced air defense systems in defense of Kurdistan, even when the Kurdish region has been attacked due* to the presence of U.S. troops there… Many in Kurdistan and the broader region will be watching to see if the U.S. military would use the same air defense system next time when Iran or its proxies launch an attack on Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Iran has attacked the Kurdistan Region several times previously, including one attack on September 8, 2018, against two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, and another, on March 13, 2022, against the home of businessman Sheikh Baz Karim Barzinji. However, in 2018 and 2022 there were no Patriot air defense systems deployed in Erbil. Moreover, between October 2023 and January 2024, during the ongoing Gaza war, Iran-backed Iraqi factions targeted U.S. bases in the Kurdistan region, including the base at Erbil International Airport and one in Harir, with suicide drones and missile strikes. The U.S. evacuated the Harir base after the increase in attacks. Since February 4, Iran-backed factions have ceased hitting U.S. military forces, apart from one attack on April 21 against U.S. forces in Syria.

In February, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Region, Masrour Barzani, told NBC News that the Iraqi Kurds did not have the capability to defend themselves against drone and missile attacks, and asked for more assistance from the United States. On April 15, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani discussed securing sites in Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region, from aerial threats. The U.S. National Defense Authorization Act of 2024, signed by President Joe Biden last December, includes a provision to equip Iraqi and Kurdish military forces with air defense systems. In March, the Pentagon said that it was waiting for the 2024 budget to be passed by the U.S. Congress to implement the decision. Yet the interception of the Iranian missile fired at Israel shows that the United States can potentially safeguard Erbil without equipping the Kurds with air defenses. It’s also unlikely that Baghdad would approve giving such advanced U.S. air defense systems to the Kurds, at a time when it seeks to limit Kurdish autonomy.

A Patriot missile battery became operational in Erbil in April 2020, a few months after the U.S. assassinated Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad. However, the system was later removed, most likely in June 2021, when the Biden administration withdrew Patriot batteries from the Middle East, including Iraq. However, the Patriots were returned to Erbil after the outbreak of the Gaza war last October, when the Biden administration sent additional Patriot systems to the Middle East in anticipation of attacks against U.S. forces.

Aaron Stein, the president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told me that if the “U.S. had warning and had made the decision to deploy a missile battery, yes, it could have [prevented the attack on Erbil]… The Patriot is a high demand, low density asset, and so moving them around the world is not all that easy. It takes planning and a specific threat. It’s really dependent on a lot of things. So, it’s hard to say.” Each battery reportedly costs 1.1 billion.

Following the assault on Erbil last January, The Pentagon’s Pat Ryder, in response to inquiries why U.S. forces had not intercepted some of the missiles targeting civilian areas in Erbil, stated that “none of these strikes were targeting U.S. personnel or U.S. facilities.”

Retired U.S. army Col. Myles Caggins, a former spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq, and a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, seemed to agree. He told me, “​The U.S. military’s priority is protecting military sites for the anti-[Islamic State] mission and other sites deemed as critical for national security objectives. Unfortunately, a businessman’s house would not have been a priority,”

Michael DiMino, a fellow at Defense Priorities and a former CIA military analyst, said it was difficult to compare the Iranian missile salvos from January and April. “For one, you’re talking about different trajectories and response times for a ballistic missile attack from Iran into Israel, compared to one from Iran into northern Iraq. There are other factors to consider too, such as the lead-up to both. In my view, there was much more telegraphing and diplomatic back-channeling prior to Iran’s attack on Israel in April than before its attack on Erbil in January.”

Indeed, Iran made it clear after senior officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force were killed in Damascus, that it would retaliate. The Iranians also said they warned the United States before their response to Israel. There was no such forewarning of the January attack, nor for that matter of an Iranian missile attack against Baluchi militant groups inside Pakistan a day later.

However, if Patriot batteries defend U.S. forces in the Middle East, then why were they employed to prevent an attack against Israel? An anonymous source in the U.S.-led coalition told me that “technically speaking, the way the [Patriot] system works is that it identifies an object that enters its area, and that’s when it fires. On the night of Iran’s attack on Israel, one missile was approaching the [Erbil Airbase] area, prompting the system to respond, but the second missile impacted outside [the area]. However, during the last attack when Mr. Peshraw was killed, all missiles followed a different route.”

Dana Stroul, a former U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary for the Middle East, added, “If a missile is on a trajectory to target U.S. forces or infrastructure, then the Patriot battery may be used to intercept the attack. If a missile attack is targeting other areas that are not near U.S. bases, then the Patriot will not engage the threat.”

These explanations may be true, but beg the question: Israel was protected by a regional network of Patriot air defenses and other means on April 15, so was the battery in Iraqi Kurdistan part of that network, or was its shooting down of an Iranian missile merely a coincidence, because the missile had entered its zone of operation? Some in Kurdistan may suspect it was the former, perhaps believing that if all U.S. allies are equal, some may be more equal than others.

* The word “during” was changed to “due,” as the original word altered the meaning of the sentence.[1]