Middle East
US President Joe Biden attends the dignified transfer of the remains of three US service members killed in the drone attack on the US military outpost in Jordan, at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, on February 2, 2024. Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States will “continue” to carry out strikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria in retaliation to the killing of American soldiers and drone strikes on US bases in the region, President Joe Biden said on Saturday.
“This afternoon, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militias use to attack U.S. forces,” Biden said in a statement.
“Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he added.
A large-scale American retaliation campaign was launched on Friday against IRGC-Quds Force and affiliated militia groups in Iraq and Syria, striking more than 85 targets with over 125 precision munitions, according to the US Central Command (CENTCOM). 1
The strikes were ordered in retaliation to the deaths of three US soldiers in a drone strike carried out by pro-Iran militias on a US military base in Jordan last Sunday.
“Let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond,” Biden stressed.
Numerous facilities including “command and control operations centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned vehicle storages” were struck, CENTCOM said.
Iraq condemned the US strikes as “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and an undermining of the efforts of the Iraqi government” at a time when the government and hardline Iraqi politicians are seeking to expel forces of the US-led coalition from the country.
“The cities of Qaim and the Iraqi border areas are subjected to American airstrikes,” said Major General Yehia Rasool, military spokesperson for Iraq’s prime minister, who called the strikes “a threat that will drag Iraq and the region into unforeseen circumstances.”
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called the strikes “the start of our response,” saying that Biden “has directed additional actions to hold the IRGC and affiliated militias accountable for their attacks on U.S. and Coalition forces.”
“These [attacks] will unfold at times and places of our choosing,” Austin stated.
American troops and bases in Iraq and Syria have come under about 165 rocket and drone attacks since mid-October by Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups condemning Washington’s support for Israel in its war against the Gaza Strip, according to the latest tally from the Pentagon.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with the IRGC, has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks on US interests in Iraq and Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor, said that 18 pro-Iran militiamen were killed in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province, near the Iraqi border, by suspected American strikes.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.
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