US reprisals vs pro-Iran groups draw fury
DAMASCUS: The United States launched overnight airstrikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria, drawing condemnation from both governments on Saturday, and promised more to come in retaliation for a deadly attack on American troops.
The US blamed last Sunday’s drone attack on an American base in Jordan on forces backed by Iran, but did not strike inside Iranian territory, with both Washington and Tehran seemingly keen to avoid an all-out war.
But with tensions in the region already running high in the face of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, both Damascus and Baghdad joined Tehran in accusing Washington of undermining the stability of the whole region.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said US warplanes struck “more than 85 targets at seven facilities utilized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the militant groups that they sponsor,” three of them in Iraq and four in Syria.
“These targets were carefully selected to avoid civilian casualties,” he added.
But Iraqi government spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said civilians were among at least 16 people killed in the US strikes in western Iraq, while Damascus’ army said “a number of civilians and soldiers” were killed in the strikes in Syria.
“The security of Iraq and the region will find itself on the brink of an abyss” because of the strikes, Awadi said.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry said the strikes served to “inflame the conflict in the Middle East in an extremely dangerous way.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the overnight operation was “another strategic mistake by the US government, which will have no result other than intensifying tension and instability.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdombased war monitor, said the strikes killed at least 23 pro-Iran fighters in eastern Syria.
It also said pro-Iran fighters were evacuating positions in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor for fear of more US strikes.
Flurry of attacks
US President Joe Biden underlined that the overnight strikes were only a beginning. “Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he said in a statement.
Kirby said Washington “did inform the Iraqi government prior to the strikes,” but his remark drew an angry denial from Baghdad, which called it and “unfounded claim crafted to mislead international public opinion.”
Relations between the two governments have soured in recent months after Washington carried out previous airstrikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq in response to a flurry of attacks on US-led troops since the war in Gaza began last October.
The two governments opened talks on the future of the US-led troop presence late last month after repeated demands from Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani for a timetable for their withdrawal.
The US has some 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq as part of an international coalition against the Islamic State group, a jihadist organization that once controlled swathes of both countries.
Its troops in Iraq are deployed at the invitation of Baghdad, but those in Syria are deployed in areas outside Damascus’ control.
They operate out of bases in the Kurdish-held northeast or in a small pocket of territory along the borders with Iraq and Jordan.
‘Significant escalation’
Analysts said the US strikes were unlikely to stem the flurry of attacks on American targets around the Middle East sparked by Washington’s support for Israel in its war on Hamas.
The strikes represent a “significant escalation,” said Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress.
But she was skeptical about the impact, adding: “We have not seen that similar tit-for-tat strikes have had a deterrent effect.”
US and coalition troops have been attacked more than 165 times in Iraq, Syria and Jordan since midOctober with weapons including drones, rockets and short-range ballistic missiles.
The soldiers killed last Sunday were the first American military deaths from hostile fire in the upsurge of violence.