Israel’s Invasion of Iraq Has Already Been Forgotten in the Media

Israel's secret Iraqi base made headlines for 2 days, but has since been forgotten

Aerial imagery shows the remnants of Israel’s illegal base in Iraq

In the first week of March, Israeli special forces were operating from a base inside Iraq. They had been there for some time. The base was secret, the presence was unauthorised, and the Iraqi government had not approved it.

The Wall Street Journal reported this on the 9th of May. The Washington Post confirmed it. A meeting was called in the Iraqi parliament to discuss the base, and a larger diplomatic scandal hit the country as a result.

In early March a sheperd saw helicopters where there should have been nothing, and he told the Iraqi military. Three regiments from the Karbala Operations Command were sent to look, and were met with airstrikes. One Iraqi soldier was killed, two were wounded, and by later accounts the shepherd who raised the alarm did not survive either.

A foreign military crossed into another country, established itself on that country’s land, and used lethal force against that country’s soldiers to avoid being discovered. International law has a word for this activity, a word the western press wouldn't use: invasion. UN Resolution 3314, the international definition of aggression, opens with the invasion or attack by the armed forces of one state of the territory of another, “or any military occupation, however temporary.”

However temporary. A patch of desert held by special forces clears the bar on the first line. The killing clears it twice over. The Western press, given the same facts, reached for words like “outpost” in an attempt not to use the word invasion. Offering Israel that out for international crimes that we are so used to seeing.

We have since learned, there was not just one illegal military base, Israel built two. The New York Times reported on the 17th of May that a second installation predated the current war and was used during last June’s strikes on Iran, with planning going back to late 2024.

U.S. officials told the Journal that Washington was not involved, while the Journal‘s own sources confirmed Washington knew. A senior official in the outgoing Iraqi prime minister’s office told The New Arab the operation ran “with American assistance and under American cover.”

None of this is new behaviour. The 2011 Strategic Framework Agreement between the two governments exists precisely to forbid the unauthorised use of Iraqi soil and airspace, and in October 2024 Baghdad protested to the UN Security Council after Israeli jets used that airspace to strike Iran. The protest produced no change and no public response. The desert base is the same contempt at higher intensity, this time with troops on the ground, along with bodies of their victims in the sand.

When the first report on this military base appeared on May 9, it spread like wildfire, and for two days, the news was everywhere. Then, after two days, the story disappeared and no one cared anymore. The NYT report informing the public of the second base got very little wider attention, and then the story went to the back of everyone’s mind.

It is clear at this point that the silence is not an accident. Look at who benefits from the story dying and you find everyone. The war is over and the base is no longer operational, which allows editors file an active sovereignty violation as something more historical, despite one of the bases being part of the ongoing war against Iran, and the other used in last year’s attack on Iran.

An allied military, armed and supplied by the West, invaded a sovereign nation with the West’s knowledge, and the Western press that broke the story walked away from it inside a fortnight.

The story disappeared from headlines because it was inconvenient. To Iraq, it is not inconvenient, it is a slap in the face to their sovereignty, and to the rest of us, it’s not convenient that two countries continue to get a free pass from the press.

Play a mental game, reverse the actors. Imagine a foreign army building a base in the United States and bombing U.S. soldiers who stumbled on it. That story would not have a half-life. It would have a permanent desk, and almost certainly a fire and fury style invasion of the country behind it, alongside a decade of occupation and war crimes.

Iraq felt that before, in 2003, when the western press amplified the case for the invasion rather than questioned it. Some habits never die.

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