Strikes in Iraq, Syria ‘accomplish nothing’: former US military spox

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A former United States military official said Washington’s Friday night strikes on Iranian forces and Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq and Syria will “accomplish nothing” and only reveal weakness in the face of Iranian adversity.

The US began a large-scale retaliation campaign on Friday night against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and affiliated militia groups in Iraq and Syria, striking more than 85 targets with over 125 precision munitions, according to the military’s Central Command (CENTCOM). President Joe Biden said these attacks will continue in both countries. 

“These Shiite groups that we hit in Iraq and Syria - they will be able to replenish the rockets and the drones and the structures that we hit in the next several weeks, so this will really accomplish nothing,” retired colonel Joe Buccino, a former CENTCOM spokesperson, told Rudaw on Saturday. 

“The Biden administration, President Biden, is very risk-averse, and feels like if we take a real strike, if we make Iran feel some real pain, this will go into a wider war. You just see here, for the last five days, we have been talking about this, publicly saying ‘hey we are going to take this strike’ and it’s going to be really hard… it all just looks very weak,” he added. 

The strikes were ordered in retaliation to the deaths of three American soldiers in a drone strike carried out by pro-Iran militias on a military base in Jordan last Sunday, and are part of a significant US retaliation campaign against Iran-backed militias.

Washington officials were very public about their intention to retaliate, making numerous statements about selecting targets. Buccino criticized the publicity, saying that it bought Iran-aligned militias time to make preparations. 

“You spent five days talking about this, and meanwhile these Shiite groups in Iraq and Syria, they hardened their sights, buried their ammunition, and moved their rockets out of the way,” Buccino said. 

“Iran is very happy to play this kind of game. Iran is in a war with the United States, but Iran is not doing any of the fighting. These militia groups that Iran funds are doing the fighting,” he added. “This is going to embolden Iran.” 

Republican lawmakers this week urged Biden to strike inside Iran. “It is long past time for this regime to pay a heavy price,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on X.  

Iraq, where the Iran-US conflict often plays out, condemned the American 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. 

While lamenting Washington’s mechanisms in carrying out the strikes, Buccino said the tit-for-tat strikes between the US and Iran-backed militias are going to empower Iraqis calling for US forces to withdraw from Iraq and Syria “because we are not defending them and not doing anything to defend them.”

“I think Iran is laughing at us,” he said. 

American troops and bases in Iraq and Syria have come under more than 165 rocket and drone attacks since mid-October by Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups condemning Washington’s support for Israel in its war in 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.

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.