The three recent strikes on military warehouses in Iran and Iraq were designed to prevent high-grade weapons from being smuggled from Iran to Syria and Lebanon, according to an intelligence report from the satellite image company ImageSat International published Thursday.
The ImageSat report said that the strikes had a secondary purpose, which was to prevent Iran from being able to launch attacks from inside Iraqi territory.
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The report said that in the past month, three targets had been hit in airstrikes, including hangars and storehouses near Baghdad believed to be storing missiles and sophisticated weaponry. In the most recent strike, which took place overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, local media reported that weapons stockpiles and missiles belonging to pro-Iranian Shiite militias had been destroyed.
Satellite images of the site targeted in Wednesday's strike show that many of the storage facilities were completely destroyed. The report also says that the first blast, caused by the detonation of missiles or bombs stored at the target site, was followed by secondary explosions that prove the storage facilities contained explosive material.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted on Thursday that Israel might have been involved in the strikes against the Iraqi targets.
In an interview with Russian-language Channel 9, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel would operate against Iranian targets in Iraq if needed, he said:
"We are operating – not just if needed – we are operating in many areas against a state that wants to annihilate us. Of course I gave the security forces a free hand and instructed them to do anything necessary to thwart Iran's plans."
Netanyahu did not directly name Iraq as one of those areas.
In an interview to The New York Times, unnamed American diplomatic officials say that Israel was responsible for the strikes in Iraq.
Israel says it has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, some of them against Iranian targets, to prevent Tehran from establishing a permanent military presence there and to stop advanced weapons reaching its proxies in the area.
Israeli officials suggested recently that they viewed Iraq, whose main ally is Iran, as more of a threat than in recent years, but have not directly commented on the recent blasts at Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) sites in Iraq.
On Wednesday, the PMF, the umbrella grouping of Iraq's mostly Shiite Muslim paramilitary groups, said the United States had allowed four Israeli drones to enter the region accompanying US forces and carry out missions on Iraqi territory.
The Pentagon denied involvement. The US-led coalition, in Iraq to fight remnants of the Islamic State group, dismissed the statement.
