The US military struck back late Friday against Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq in retaliation for last weekend’s drone strike that killed three US Army soldiers in Jordan, the Pentagon announced.
The attack began a little more than an hour after the end of a dignified evacuation ceremony honoring the three soldiers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
The US attack was preceded by a series of explosions in Syria that were not believed to be caused by American forces.
However, the Pentagon declined to comment on the matter.
Senior Biden administration officials have previously said “it will be clear” when the US retaliation campaign begins, with the Pentagon and National Security Council saying Thursday it will be a multi-faceted campaign.
“The first thing you see is not the last,” MSN spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.
Joe Biden attended the funeral of Army Reserve Sergeants William Rivers, Kennedy Sanders and Breonna Moffett, three US service members killed in Jordan during a drone strike. Reuters
The US has pledged to hold the Islamic Resistance in Iraq umbrella group accountable for its weekend attack that killed Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, and wounded about 40 other American service members.
With nearly a week having passed since the attack, critics of the Biden administration have warned that the delay has given Iranian military officers and members of Tehran-backed militia groups enough time to go into hiding.
President Biden has authorized a “staged” response to begin as soon as this weekend, with several days of strikes on Iranian personnel and facilities in Syria and Iraq, US officials told the Wall Street Journal, as well as non-military measures to prevent an escalation. from the conflict.
Tower 22, near the Jordanian border. Planet Labs/AFP via Getty Images Map of the Middle East.
Tensions have risen between US and Iranian proxies in the Middle East since Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, which The Journal previously reported was planned and signed off on by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Since October, Iranian militias have launched attacks against US forces in Iraq, Syria and Jordan more than 150 times, Pentagon officials said, with Houthi rebels in Yemen also firing rockets at commercial and military ships in the Red Sea.
Biden vowed the US “will respond” but was cautious throughout the week about telegraphing any specific military action by his administration.
US Army Reserve Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett and Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders. via REUTERS
“I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for,” he told reporters on Tuesday outside the White House, adding that he considered Iran “responsible in the sense that they supplied weapons to the people who did it.”
Republican defense peddlers blasted the president for hesitating in the wake of the deaths of three American service members and injuries to dozens of others.
“Biden and his spokespeople say we must be ‘proportionate’ and ‘measured’ when responding to Iran killing US troops. But that shows weakness. It tells Iran that it is acceptable to kill Americans,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) aired on Tuesdays at X.
Joe Biden stands as Army pallbearers move evacuation cases containing the remains of US Army soldiers. AP
“Our response should be an overwhelming force to deter this attack.”
The last direct attack on Iranian military officials occurred on January 3, 2020, when former President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike in Iraq that killed Qassem Soleimani, the top general of Iran’s IRGC paramilitary Quds Force.
Tehran then launched a missile attack on US troops in Iraq, injuring dozens but causing no service member deaths.
Biden vowed the US “will respond” but was cautious throughout the week. Reuters
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a “proportionate attack” was carried out “on three facilities used by the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia group and other groups allied with Iran in Iraq.”
The “precision strike” was in response to an attack days earlier on an Iraqi airbase that injured US troops and was part of “escalating attacks on US and Coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias,” Austin said in a statement.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/