The Israeli forces operated at least two covert bases in Iraq’s western desert, used by Tel Aviv possibly to support military actions against Iran during the 12-day conflict in June 2025 and the ongoing war with Tehran, the New York Times reported.

According to the New York Times, one of the bases was discovered accidentally by an Iraqi shepherd who stumbled upon the closely guarded Israeli military secret, hidden in the desert. His family believes it cost him his life.

The newspaper reported that the slain shepherd contacted Iraq’s regional military command to “report what he had seen: soldiers, helicopters and tents clustered around a landing strip”. The NYT report confirmed an earlier report by the Wall Street Journal, which reported on the presence of one Israeli outpost in Iraq.

In response to the shepherd’s report, the Iraqi army sent a reconnaissance force, which came under attack. One soldier was killed, two were wounded and two vehicles were bombed before the units decided to retreat.

Report says one of the bases ‘predates current conflict’, also used during 2025 Iran war

In public, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command announced “foreign” forces had attacked their soldiers, and said it had raised complaints at the UN Security Council. In private, the chief of staff of Iraq’s armed forces, Gen Abdul-Amir Yarallah, called his counterparts in the US military. “They confirmed the force is not an American force, so we understood it was Israeli,” the report, quoting an Iraqi general, said.

Iraq’s government, for which acknowledging Israeli outposts is fraught, has still not acknowledged the Israeli bases. Iraq has no diplomatic relations with Israel, and its population sees Israel as an enemy.

The newspaper report eventually revealed that the Israelis operated two bases, intermittently, for well over a year — both in the western desert.

Regional security officials told the NYT that the discovered base predated the current conflict and was used during the 12-day war against Tehran in June 2025. “Israeli forces began preparing to build the makeshift base as far back as late 2024,” one of the regional officials said. The outpost was made to shorten the distances Israeli aircraft had to fly to reach Iran.

According to the report, the US had known about the bases “since June 2025 or possibly earlier”. That would most likely mean Baghdad’s other key ally, the United States, had withheld from Iraq the fact that hostile forces were on its soil.

In both the brief war last year and the current conflict, two Iraqi security officials told the NYT that Washington compelled Iraq to shut down its radars to protect US aircraft, making Baghdad more reliant on US forces to detect hostile activity, the report added.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2026