The United States said on Friday it had “successfully” carried out retaliatory strikes targeting elite Iranian forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria, with Joe Biden warning they would “continue”.
The Democratic president had attended earlier Friday, on a base in the northeast of the United States, the solemn return of the bodies of three American soldiers killed Sunday in Jordan, an attack attributed by Washington to groups supported by Iran.
Two hours after the doors of the mortuary van closed on the three coffins covered with the Stars and Stripes, the American army took action.
The intervention lasted approximately thirty minutes and was “a success,” said the White House, which once again assured that it did not want a “war” with Iran.
The operation mobilized numerous combat aircraft, including long-range bombers, the Pentagon said.
A total of 85 targets at seven different sites (three in Iraq and four in Syria) were targeted, said John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), at least 18 pro-Iranian fighters have been killed in eastern Syria.
Security sources also confirmed to AFP bombings of positions of pro-Iran armed groups in western Iraq, near Syria.
“Violation of sovereignty”
The White House assured that the United States had “warned the Iraqi government before the strikes”.
The latter criticized a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.
These strikes raise fears of “disastrous consequences for the security and stability of Iraq and the region,” condemned a military spokesperson for the Iraqi prime minister in a press release.
The American operation targeted command and intelligence centers, as well as drone and missile storage infrastructure “which enabled attacks against American and coalition forces,” the Pentagon said.
“We do not want to see another attack on American positions or military personnel in the region,” said White House spokesman John Kirby.
“Our response began today. It will continue according to the schedule and in the places that we decide,” Joe Biden also indicated.
Since mid-October, more than 165 drone strikes and rocket attacks have targeted American forces deployed with an international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq and Syria, but no American service member had been killed until the attack on Sunday in Jordan.
Return of remains
“The United States does not want conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let those who want to harm us know this well: if you touch an American, we will respond,” the American president further indicated in a press release.
The American executive had already indicated previously that the reprisals would be multiple and spread over time, against different targets.
Joe Biden, campaigning for a second term, was under intense pressure to respond to the deaths of the three American soldiers.
The bodies of William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, soldiers from the US state of Georgia, were taken out one by one on Friday from an imposing military transport plane on the Dover base.
John Kirby, however, assured that there was no link between the time chosen to carry out the strikes, which depended among other things on the weather conditions, and the ceremony for the return of the remains, which Joe Biden attended on Friday.
The 81-year-old Democrat, who remained motionless in the cold wind, his hand on his heart and his gaze fixed straight ahead, was accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, Defense Minister Lloyd Austin, the head of state -Major Charles Brown and other personalities.
The families of the three soldiers, away from the press, were also present.
The ceremony, regulated to the millimeter, lasted around ten minutes, in total silence only interrupted by orders intended for the military.
Joe and Jill Biden had already, in the same place, attended the repatriation of the bodies of American soldiers who fell during an attack at Kabul airport on August 26, 2021, at the time of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
