WASHINGTON – Iranian-backed terrorists attacked U.S. allies in Syria over the weekend, officials said, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Saudi Arabia on his latest Middle East tour aimed at stemming the Israel-Gaza conflict. It was announced on Monday that it had launched two more attacks against the military. From growth.
Iranian proxy militia fires two rockets at mission support forces in Syria On Saturday, the Euphrates base targeted U.S. and coalition forces stationed there, according to a Pentagon spokesperson. General Pat Ryder.
The next day, an Iranian government-backed group launched an attack drone at the Green Village mission support base, also in Syria, but it landed “a few kilometers” from the military base, Ryder said.
No injuries or damage were reported in either weekend attack, the Pentagon said, but it marks the latest in a string of more than 165 Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq and Jordan since Oct. 17. This is the latest one.
Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon spokeswoman, said at the time that as of January 29, about 80 U.S. personnel had been injured in a series of attacks over the past three and a half months.
The first and only U.S. death to date occurred on January 27, when three U.S. soldiers were killed in an attack on a secret military outpost known as Tower 22 in Jordan.
Saturday’s attack on Syria came a day after U.S. military aircraft, including a B-1 bomber, fired “more than 125 precision-guided missiles over a period of about 30 minutes” in a retaliatory mission to avenge the deaths of three soldiers, it said. said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Friday.
The mission targeted the Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq. The resistance movement is an umbrella organization for Tehran-backed militias, including Kataib Hezbollah, which was responsible for deadly attacks on U.S. forces, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which specializes in military intelligence and irregular warfare. Branches were also targeted.
Members of IRI are believed to have been involved in the weekend attack, which was launched by Khatib Hezbollah on January 30 against US forces in the region, following an earlier promise by the US government to carry out retaliatory attacks. The attack came just days after the U.S. military announced it was halting its attacks.
At the time, White House and Pentagon officials warned the public not to take Kataib Hezbollah’s words at face value and encouraged them to “focus on actions, not words.”
While U.S. Central Command continues to assess the success of the airstrikes, Ryder said Pentagon officials rate them as having a “good effect” on Friday afternoon, with the airstrikes striking more than 80 targets at seven facilities. The target was destroyed or functionally damaged.”
However, Ryder’s positive outlook on the effectiveness of airstrikes is balanced by continued attacks on US forces.
Asked to explain the Pentagon’s optimistic initial assessment of the impact, despite failing to deter further enemy attacks, the spokesperson said the airstrikes had reduced some of the enemy’s capabilities. He said there are early signs that he did.
Ryder declined to provide an initial estimate of the number of enemy casualties from U.S. airstrikes, citing CENTCOM’s ongoing assessments. He said it was safe to assume at least some people were killed.
“I think it is reasonable to conclude that there were likely casualties associated with these attacks,” he said.
As Saudi Arabia’s Blinken insisted on the Biden administration’s message that it does not seek war with Iran or an escalation of other Middle East conflicts, Ryder reinforced the same assertion to reporters at the Pentagon.
Still, he said additional U.S. strikes were expected to protect U.S. forces based in the region to fight Islamic State. So far, Islamic State is not believed to be involved in the latest attacks.
“Our goal is not to say, ‘Okay, game on, let’s do this and go.’ [to] “An all-out war against Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria, that’s not what we’re there for,” he said. “We are there to carry out the mission to help defeat ISIS.”
Ryder said that while U.S. forces in the region are focused on ISIS, military personnel at targeted bases have the authority to hunt down groups that attack them.
“Our military will always maintain its inherent right of self-defense,” he said. “So if they need to take appropriate action to protect themselves, they will. You’ve seen us do that in the past.”
