US bombs terrorists in Iraq and Syria in response to attack in Jordan
Tension has increased in the Middle East after the United States fulfilled this Friday, February 2, its promise to respond militarily to the January 28 attack on one of its military bases on the Jordanian border with Syria, in which three American soldiers were killed. , Washington’s attack is directed against militias backed by the Iranian regime. The region is seeing an increase in violence due to the ongoing war in Gaza and threats of new conflicts by various extremist groups.
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This Friday, February 2, the United States launched a series of strikes in Syria and Iraq, in which it claimed to hit 85 targets belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and other allied militias, according to US sources told Reuters and AP .
Three US service members were killed and more than 45 were injured during a drone strike in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border on Sunday, January 28.
The US military said in a statement that the strikes targeted targets including command and control centers, rocket, missile and drone storage facilities, as well as logistics and ammunition supply chain facilities.
United States President Joe Biden has accused Iran of financing rebel groups and providing them with the means to carry out their operations. The president declared, “I hold Iran responsible in the sense that it is providing weapons to the people who did this.”
“We will respond,” Biden had already declared at a campaign event in South Carolina, in which he called for a minute of silence for soldiers killed in the Jan. 28 attack on Jordan’s border with Syria.
They may be the first in a series of attacks
This is believed to be the first step in the Biden administration’s multi-pronged response to the attack in Jordan.
Although the US strikes did not target anywhere inside Iran, they are likely to raise concerns about rising tensions in the Middle East due to Israel’s more than three-month war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.
Syrian state media, for its part, confirmed on Friday that the “US offensive” on the Syrian desert areas and the border between Syria and Iraq caused several victims and injuries.
The attack was the first deadly attack against US troops in Jordan since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October.
Before Friday’s retaliatory strikes, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Iran would not start a war but would give a “strong response” to anyone trying to intimidate it.
The Revolutionary Guard has reduced the deployment of its senior officers to Syria due to a series of deadly Israeli attacks and will rely more on allied Shiite militias to maintain its dominance there.
Pro-Iran militia on America’s target
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an organization that brings together Iran-backed fundamentalist terrorist groups, claimed responsibility for the attack that killed three US soldiers.
The al-Nujaba militia, one of the most prominent Islamist resistance groups in Iraq, claimed responsibility in a statement for several attacks the group launched on January 28 against US bases in Syria and Iraq, including an attack against al- Was. The Tanf base, on Jordan’s border with Syria, “resulted in the killing and wounding of more than 50 American soldiers”.
“This operation is a brief introduction to the hell of Islamic resistance operations in Iraq,” the group warned.
The attack is a major escalation in an already tense situation in the Middle East, where war broke out in Gaza after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people. Israel’s subsequent offensive on Gaza has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry.
read this alsoFrom Gaza to Yemen and Pakistan: Tension spreads across the Middle East
Since then, US forces have been attacked more than 150 times in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed groups, causing at least 70 casualties, most of them traumatic injuries, before Sunday’s attack. U.S. warships have also come under attack in Yemen by Iran-backed Houthi forces, who regularly attack commercial vessels passing through Red Sea waters off the coast of Yemen.
While the United States has so far maintained an official stance that Washington is not waging a war in the region, it has been retaliating against Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria and striking Yemen’s Houthi military capabilities.
In a statement released by the White House on Sunday, January 28, Biden said, “We will continue our commitment to fighting terrorism. And we have no doubt: We will hold all those responsible accountable when and in any way we choose.” Will accommodate.”
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