Rockets Red Glare in the Green Zone

According to Reuters (see "Two Iraq protesters killed as anti-government unrest persists") Muqtada al-Sadr has pulled his support of protests that are part of the ongoing October Revolution in Iraq:

After a lull in unrest earlier this month, demonstrations resumed in Baghdad and southern cities and protesters have controlled three key bridges in Baghdad and maintain camps and road blocks in several cities in the south.

[snip]

Operations by security forces to remove the protest camps started after populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Saturday he would halt the involvement of his supporters. 

Sadr had backed the demands of protesters for the removal of corrupt politicians and for the provision of services and jobs soon after the demonstrations began in October, but stopped short of calling all his followers to join in.

Demonstrations continued in Baghdad where security forces used tear gas against protesters in central Baghdad. Protests also continued in many southern cities on Monday, resisting repeated attempts by security forces to end their protests.

Protesters in Nassiriya broke into a police office on Monday and set fire to at least five police vehicles parked inside before they left the location, police and Reuters witness said.

Alissa Rubin of The New York Times elaborates that

The government’s move to clear protesters came after the prominent Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, announced in a tweet on Friday that he was withdrawing support for the demonstrators and would no longer intervene on their behalf. He said his move was a result of what he called the antagonistic behavior of some of the protesters toward his followers.

His withdrawal of support, and the resulting departure of many of his followers from the demonstrations, deprived the protests of a critical base of participants, leaving those remaining more vulnerable to a government crackdown.

[snip] 

His followers had presented themselves as protectors of the protesters — whether nor not that was consistently the case — so their withdrawal implicitly opened the way for those antagonistic to the demonstrators, including the Iraqi government forces, to move in.

Mr. Sadr is also well known in Iraq for his sizable militia, known as Soraya Salaam, or the Peace Brigades, who although they did not come to the protest squares armed, represented a veiled threat to the government and others who wanted to see the protesters removed.

Late Sunday the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was struck in a rocket attack.  According to Al Jazeera, USJOC said in a statement that no rockets hit the embassy. But AFP said that three rockets hit the embassy, one striking the cafeteria during dinnertime.

No one has claimed responsibility. Caretaker prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi condemned the attack, promising to bring the perpetrators to justice. If the U.S. decides to target militia units of the Popular Mobilization Forces, as it did earlier with Kata'ib Hezbollah, Iraq will be on the brink of a full-scale war.

The U.S. goal in that war, as we saw on Friday, is partition of Iraq. I doubt the Trump administration is ready to commit to such a project right now, with the Iowa caucus next Monday; and I doubt U.S. allies in Erbil and Anbar are ready either. So the U.S. response to these rocket attacks on the Green Zone is not going to be as incendiary as the assassination of Soleimani. Trump has to get reelected before full-scale war in the Middle East can get underway.