The US military has launched dozens of airstrikes against targets in Syria and Iraq, the first retaliation for a drone attack that killed three soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.
“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,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday, referring to to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). .
“Our response began today. This will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he added.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in the two countries “with numerous aircraft, including long-range bombers from the United States.”
“The airstrikes used more than 125 precision munitions,” the statement added.
CENTCOM said the installations that were struck included command and control operations centers, intelligence centers, weapons storage sites and other installations linked to militias or the IRGC Quds Force , the Guard expeditionary unit that manages relations with Tehran and the arming of regional groups.
CENTCOM Statement on US Strikes in Iraq and Syria
On February 2 at 4 p.m. Eastern Time, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force. Iranian and affiliated militias. American military forces… pic.twitter.com/HeLMFDx9zY
– US Central Command (@CENTCOM) February 2, 2024
Three US soldiers were killed and around 40 others injured Sunday in a drone attack on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-linked groups, claimed responsibility for the drone attack.
Iran has denied directing the attack, saying the groups were acting on their own.
“From the moment the attack occurred, the United States said there would be a military response, and U.S. officials like Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin said the response would come in several ways. So this could very well be phase one, but the retaliatory US airstrikes have now begun,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Rosiland Jordan said, reporting from the Pentagon.
“This is the first step, I don’t think it will be the last,” she added.
On Friday, Syrian state media said an “American aggression” on a number of sites in the Syrian desert areas and on the Syrian-Iraqi border had caused a number of casualties and injuries.
Iraqi security sources told Tel Aviv Tribune that six airstrikes targeted a number of locations in the country.
“These airstrikes constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty (…) and constitute a threat that could lead to disastrous consequences for Iraq and the region,” Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement after the strikes.
“Dignified transfer” of bodies
Although the U.S. strikes did not target any location inside Iran, they are likely to increase concerns about tensions in the Middle East sparked by Israel’s more than three-month-old war on Gaza.
The strikes come hours after President Biden met with the families of three soldiers killed Sunday – identified as William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Sanders and Breonna Moffett – as the remains of the service members arrived in the United States.
Biden and his wife Jill visited Dover Air Force Base in the US state of Delaware on Friday to honor the soldiers during the “dignified transfer” of their bodies.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CQ Brown were also in attendance – their presence underscoring the importance, as well as the relative rarity, of returning fallen service members following the withdrawal of the United States from major foreign conflicts.
Biden’s statement Friday said the United States “does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.”
But the US president added: “Let anyone who might seek to harm us know this: if you harm an American, we will respond. »
Earlier this week, when Biden was asked if he held Iran responsible for the drone attack, he replied: “I hold them responsible, in the sense that they are providing the weapons to those who did it. »
American Republicans are calling for a forceful response, particularly directly against Iran.
The Biden administration has suggested that the U.S. response to the drone attack would be prolonged, not a single strike.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Thursday it would be a tiered approach over a period of time. “The first thing you see won’t be the last,” he told reporters.