The White House National Security Council (NSC) had asked the US Defense Ministry to list available options to strike Iran after a militant attack near the American diplomatic mission in Iraq last year, a new report has revealed.
Although the attack in early September did no harm and saw three mortars only hit empty ground in Baghdad’s International Green Zone, John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s hawkish national security adviser and head of the NSC, called several meetings to discuss a “forceful” American response, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Back then, Bolton and some others in Washington thought that since the attack followed the torching of the Iranian consulate in the Iraqi oil hub of Basra and was claimed by a Shia group, then it must have had something to do with Iran.
They were also under the impression that Iran was behind the unrest in Basra, the report added.
The idea was so far-fetched that the NSC’s…