TC Bureau (Gourav Sharma): The US military has launched airstrikes on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), signalling a new willingness in Washington to engage its forces directly in the crisis in the Middle East. The strikes, which the Pentagon said hit a weapons storage facility and an ammunition storage facility used by the IRGC and militia it backs, were the first such US military intervention since war broke out between Hamas and Israel on 7 October.
US facilities in Iraq and Syria have been hit by a series of low-level attacks by drones and rockets over the past 10 days that have been claimed by Iran-backed militia, amid growing fears that the Hamas-Israel war could escalate into a regional conflict. The attacks have injured at least 24 US servicemen and the death of one civilian contractor. There were three such attacks on Thursday, striking two US bases in Syria and one in western Iraq.
Experts told the Guardian this week there was “a limit to patience” in Washington and that the administration of President Joe Biden would probably seek to deter with force any further attacks despite the risk of escalation. Biden has already ordered two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean and sent new anti-missile units with hundreds of troops to protect US bases and allies in the region. The US retaliatory strikes were carried out by two F-16 fighter jets at about 4.30am on Friday near Abu Kamal, a Syrian town on the border with Iraq, where the US has a major base that has been the target of several recent attacks by Iran-backed militia.
It was unclear if Iranian nationals were killed. The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, described “self-defence strikes” and said Biden had directed the tailored strikes “to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests”. US officials said they did not coordinate the strikes with Israel, and Austin said the operation was separate and distinct from Israel’s war against Hamas.
He added: “We continue to urge all state and non-state entities not to take action that would escalate into a broader regional conflict.” A week ago, a US warship intercepted missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, possibly at Israel. The recent attacks on the US have been claimed by groups either directly controlled by Tehran or sharing the ideology of other groups fighting Israel. On Thursday, a US base at Kharab al-Jir in Syria was attacked for the second time in two days, and a base in western Iraq was also hit.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said at the UN on Thursday that if Israel’s offensive against Hamas did not stop, the US would “not be spared from this fire”. Charles Lister, the director of the Syria and countering terrorism and extremism programmes at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the attacks showed Iran had an extensive network of well-armed, aggressive and well-coordinated proxies across the region, “which it has established for exactly this scenario”. He added: “They are currently testing redlines but not pushing too hard.
They are putting the onus on the US to respond.” The US is in a delicate situation. It wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the US as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, while also trying to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict.
