-On December 31st, hundreds of supporters
of an Iranian-backed militia
broke into the US embassy compound in Baghdad.
Video, including some taken by the Post's Mustafa Salim,
showed chaos on the ground.
Demonstrators were protesting the US air
strikes on December 29th that killed 25 members
of the Iranian Kataeb Hezbollah militia.
The strikes were on retaliation against a rocket attack
on a base in Northern Iraq that killed a US contractor.
-What we're seeing here is supporters of the militia,
the Kataeb Hezbollah militia.
They are marching on the US embassy
in the heavily guarded green zone.
They have very high walls.
They have a lot of security, iron gates, a lot of guards.
It had never been imagined that this embassy could be breached.
But the protestors did manage to smash down one of the gates.
They got through a steel door.
They got through bullet-proof glass,
and the set fire to it and burned it.
The Iraqi security forces throughout all of this made
no attempt to stop them breaching either the embassy
or from attacking this building.
In fact, some were seen joining in the attack.
Later in the day,
the prime minister appealed to the protestors
not to actually go into the embassy
and called on the security forces to protect the facility.
And Iraqi security forces at that point did intervene,
and they set up a sort of buffer
between the demonstrators and the diplomats inside.
The diplomats, meanwhile, are trapped inside the embassy.
They are in a reinforced safe area,
one of the diplomats told me,
but he refused to give any more details than that.
-A spokesman for Kataeb Hezbollah said the crowd
would besiege the embassy until the facility shuts down
and US diplomats and troops leave Iraq.
Despite the barricade, people outside periodically
threw Molotov cocktails into the compound
and tried to tear down the razor wire on top of the walls.
Inside, the Iraqi and American guards fired stun grenades
and tear gas respectively to disperse the crowd.
Defense Secretary Mark T.
Esper announced that two Apache helicopters
and a small contingent of Marines
will be sent as reinforcements.
The Pentagon shared video of Marines
preparing to deploy to Iraq from Kuwait.
-This all began much earlier in the year
as part of the bigger rivalry
between Iran and America in the Middle East.
It began really with President Trump's Maximum Pressure
campaign of sanctions against Iran.
Iran has been pushing back against that
anywhere that it can find to sort of tweak the Americans.
Iraq has really been trapped between Iran
and the United States ever since the US invaded Iraq in 2003.
That brought Shiites, Iran's coreligionists,
in Iraq to power in the government in Baghdad,
and it brought a heavy level of Iranian influence into Iraq.
And what we've seen in these recent years
is that influence has grown enormously,
and the main way the Iranians wield their influence
is through these armed militias that are very loyal to Iran.
And these militias have become the most powerful military
and political force in the country,
which is what we saw today,
because the Iraqi security forces stood aside
and let them attack the American embassy like this.
They did not attempt to impede them in any way.
-As the sun began to set, militia supporters set up tents
for the night outside the compound.
Video also showed US helicopters
flying in the vicinity of the embassy
and launching flares.