U.S. Army Photo by Maj. Charlie Dietz, Task Force-Iraq Public Affairs
The top story on New Year’s Day 2020 centered on a shocking December 31 attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad, inside Iraq’s Green Zone. Protestors had breached the fortified embassy compound, presumably while some Iraqi security personnel looked the other way, and set fires around the property retribution for US airstrikes on members of an Iranian militia. And come New Year’s Day, demonstrators were still out in force. The highly unexpected assault, to use official diplomatic parlance, shined a very unflattering light on our long-running geopolitical clusterf with Iraq and Iran.