For U.S. and Iran, a delicate dance to avert war

With the aid of daylight, the U.S. military began assessing the dozens of airstrikes it conducted Friday night that hit 85 targets at seven sites in Iraq and Syria.

The strikes were in retaliation for a drone attack on a remote outpost in Jordan last Sunday that killed three American soldiers. The United States has suggested that an Iran-linked Iraqi militia, Kataib Hezbollah, was behind that attack.

President Joe Biden’s administration warned these strikes would not be the last but did not carry out any further attacks by nightfall in the region Saturday. Syria and Iraq said Friday’s strikes killed at least 39 people — 23 in Syria and 16 in Iraq — which the Iraqi government said included civilians.

The strikes left the region on edge, although analysts said that they seemed designed to avoid a confrontation with Iran by focusing on the operational capabilities of the militias.

“We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after the strikes, “but the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces.”

The reaction from Iranian officials was condemnatory but not inflammatory. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, said the U.S. attacks represented “another strategic mistake” but did not speak about striking back. Syria and Iraq denounced the U.S. strikes in their countries as violations of their sovereignty, adding that the attacks would only impede the fight against Islamic State militants.

The United States not only calibrated the attacks to avoid stoking a broader war but also had openly warned that they were coming days in advance of the strikes, said Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Both sides, she added, had sought ways to attack that remained “below a threshold that would spell an all-out war.”