The US has begun conducting airstrikes on targets in Iraq and Syria, the start of what will likely be a series of larger-scale US strikes on Iranian-backed militias who have carried out attacks on US troops in the Middle East, according to two US officials.
The retaliatory strikes came in response to a drone strike by Iran-backed militants on a US military outpost in Jordan on Sunday, which killed three US service members and wounded more than 40 others.
They came not long after President Joe Biden attended a dignified transfer and met family members of the soldiers killed in Jordan.
Officials have signaled the strikes are likely to be more significant than previous attacks on Iranian-backed militias over the last several weeks, which have primarily focused on weapons storage or training facilities. But the administration is threading a needle – they want to deter and stop further attacks but avoid a full-scale conflict with Iran breaking out in a region already roiled by the continuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The Biden administration has signaled there could be additional actions in the coming days; Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday the US response would be “multi-tiered.”
“We have the ability to respond a number of times, depending on what the situation is,” he said at a news conference at the Pentagon.
“They have a lot of capability. I have a lot more,” Austin added referring to the Iranian-backed militias.
Biden has been under increasing pressure to respond to the soldiers’ deaths in a way that stops the militia attacks for good, CNN previously reported. Iran-backed militants have targeted US military facilities in Iraq and Syria over 160 times since October, and several Republican lawmakers had called for the US to hit…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply