Officials: US strikes contain two messages
WASHINGTON » The U.S. strikes on two Iranian military munitions stockpiles in Syria on Friday were carefully designed, President Joe Biden's aides said, to send two distinct messages to Tehran.
The first was that if the attacks on U.S. forces by Iranian proxies escalate, it would force the United States into the kind of overt military confrontation with Iran that both nations have avoided since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
And the second was that if the attacks stop, both sides could quietly back away, free to resume the simmering hostilities that have characterized the relationship in recent years.
It is the latest gamble by the United States to modify Iran's behavior, few of which have worked in the past. And now, with the backdrop of a new war in the Middle East, Biden is signaling that Tehran's best bet is to stay clear of involvement. The main goal, said White House spokesperson John Kirby, is “to deter and to prevent future attacks.”
Kirby added the U.S. did not want to escalate: “Nobody's looking for a conflict with Iran.”
U.S. strikes on a weapons storage facility and an ammunition storage facility, conducted by Air Force F-16 jets, were in response to rocket and drone attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, which the Pentagon said caused traumatic brain injuries to 19 troops. While there have been U.S. strikes before — including the targeted assassination in January 2020 of the head of Iran's Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani — these strikes were intended as highly visible brushback pitches.
“These precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. He quickly added that the United States “has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities” if the Iranian-backed attacks stop.
(Later Friday, Iran's proxies launched an attack drone at U.S. forces in western Iraq, but there were no injuries or damage on the ground — suggesting that relatively low-level skirmishes may continue.)
Biden approved the strikes after U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wanted to avoid a wider war with Israel or with the United States, U.S. officials said.
But Iranians wanted do something to pressure the United States to rein in Israel and to remind Americans of Tehran's power, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. response, officials said, was calibrated to demonstrate strength, but not escalate the situation or give hard-liners an excuse to press Khamenei to lend his support for a wider regional war, led by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.