The first U.S. airstrikes to protect Iraq‘s Haditha Dam from ISIS do not signal the opening of a new front or widening of the American military effort in that country, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.
“It’s new in the sense that it’s Haditha Dam, but not new at all to our strategy,” Hagel said Sunday at a press conference in the former Soviet state of Georgia, where he is visiting and meeting with officials regarding the situation in Ukraine.
A clutch of fighters and bombers undertook four airstrikes near Haditha on Saturday, taking out five ISIS Humvees, a checkpoint and another armed vehicle and also damaged an ISIS bunker, the Pentagon said. Haditha Dam is being protected by Iraqi security forces, with support from Sunni tribes, federal officials said.
President Obama will speak to the nation on Wednesday to outline his strategy for dealing with ISIS, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIL.
“I think the strikes that the United States took are very much in line with what the president — with what President Obama said were the guiding principles of military action in Iraq,” Hagel said, according to a transcript of the press conference made available by the Pentagon.
“First, the Iraqi government asked us for their support in those strikes. Second, it was the Iraqi security forces on the ground who conceived of the operation … the Iraqi security forces’ air force is conducting strikes. Haditha Dam is a critically important facility for Iraq. It is, I think, the second-largest hydroelectric dam in Iraq.”
Six miles long and finished in 1987, Haditha Dam holds back the waters of the Euphrates River and provides power, drinking water and irrigation for much of Anbar Province. The United States has undertaken numerous airstrikes against ISIS encroachment at another key dam, the one at Mosul on the Tigris River, since early August.
“If that dam were thrown into ISIL’s hands or if that dam would be destroyed, the damage that that would cause would be very significant,” Hagel said. “And it would put a significant additional and big risk into the mix in Iraq, which also would risk our interests, as well.”
The secretary called the airstrikes “consistent with what the president has said were the guidelines for any military action there, to protect our people and critical infrastructure in Iraq, both of those fit clearly into the purpose of the strikes, as well as the request of the Iraqi government.”
