President Joe Biden has ordered an airstrike this morning in eastern Syria. The target has been Iranian-sponsored Shiite forces. The coup was a response to the firing of rockets at a base that housed US troops in Erbil, northern Iraq, on February 15. According to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the bombing, the first Biden has launched since his inauguration, was “a proportionate military response. Pentagon sources have assured CNN that “at least a handful” of pro-Iranian fighters – usually of Afghan or Pakistani origin, sometimes Iraqi – have died in the attack, which “has destroyed multiple facilities located at a checkpoint. border “used by armed groups such as Kait’ib Hezbollah or Kait’ib Sayyid Shuhada. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has raised the number of fatalities to 17, but the US does not offer concrete figures.
Lloyd Austin has insisted that Biden’s warrant is a replica of the one launched last week from near the border between the Iraqi provinces of Erbil and Kirkuk, which killed a foreign military contractor and injured nine people, including Americans. A Shiite militia called Awliya al Dam (The Guardians of the Blood) claimed that action, which Washington read as an attempt by Tehran to pressure them to put their litigation high on the list of priorities.
Since the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, ordered by Donald Trump in January of last year, Iran has advocated for revenge by pulling US forces out of Iraq. Although these were the plans of Trump, who had plans to withdraw, Biden seems to want to bet on a prolonged presence.
Also, the Iranians insist on the need for Washington to return to the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 and lift the sanctions, which is why they are also pressing with nuclear measures. Although favorable to an informal dialogue, Biden has refused to lift Trump’s sanctions unless the Iranians reverse all these measures. Furthermore, his team has been reluctant to maintain the same agreement signed with Barack Obama in 2015, which Tehran advocates as the only possible compromise. In this framework, the US Secretary of Defense has considered that “the operation sends an unambiguous message; President Biden will act to protect the American personnel of the coalition. At the same time, we have acted deliberately to de-escalate the general situation both in eastern Syria as in Iraq. The place attacked is a common entry point for weapons into Syria, where Iran went, at the request of the Government of Bashar Asad, to fight the opposition armed forces.
We are sure of the goal we were after, Austin stressed.
We know what we hit. We allowed and encouraged the Iraqis to research and develop intelligence, and that was very useful for us to be able to refine the objective, “he added. A myriad of militias, some under the aegis of the Popular Mobilization Forces, operate in Iraq. Iran insists that they enjoy autonomy and act according to their interests, the White House blames them for attacking with weapons and orders from Iran. The skirmishes between the Americans and these militias in Iraq have been the reason for rejection by the government, which protested as a “violation of sovereignty” the attack that Trump ordered against one of these forces on December 29. Although part of the Executive is in favor of the exit of US troops from the country, some factions denounce that the Shiite militias have enough power to destabilize their territory by outside interests. The attacks this morning may be the prelude to new actions against US troops in Iraq, a sign of a potential escalation of tension that returns the situation to that of the Trump era.
