Tension increases in the Middle East after the United States fulfilled this Friday, February 2, its promise to respond militarily to the attack it received on January 28 on one of its military bases on Jordan's border with Syria, which caused the death of three American military. Washington's offensive is directed against militias supported by the Iranian regime. The region is experiencing an increase in violence with the ongoing war in Gaza and different extremist groups threatening new conflicts.
First modification:
4 min
This Friday, February 2, the United States launched a series of attacks in Syria and Iraq, in which it claimed to have attacked 85 targets related to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and other allied militias, according to US sources detailed to Reuters and AP.
The offensive comes after three US service members were killed and more than 45 injured during a drone strike in northeastern Jordan, near the border with Syria, on Sunday, January 28.
The US military said in a statement that the attacks hit targets including command and control centers, rocket, missile and drone storage facilities, as well as logistics and ammunition supply chain facilities.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has accused Iran of financing rebel groups and providing them with the means to carry out their operations. “I consider Iran responsible in the sense that it is supplying weapons to the people who did it,” the president declared.
“We will respond,” Biden had already announced, at a campaign event in South Carolina, in which he asked for a minute of silence for the soldiers killed in an attack on Jordan's border with Syria, on January 28.
They may be the first in a series of attacks
These are believed to be just the first of a multi-layered response by the Biden Administration to the attack in Jordan.
While the US strikes did not target anywhere inside Iran, they are likely to raise concerns about escalating 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 a “US aggression” at sites in the desert areas of Syria and on the border between Syria and Iraq caused several victims and injuries.
The one in Jordan was the first deadly attack against American troops since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October.
Ahead of Friday's retaliatory attacks, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Iran will not start a war but will “respond strongly” to anyone who tries 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 preserve its dominance there.
Pro-Iran militia, in the crosshairs of the US
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an organization that brings together hardline militant groups backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the attack in which the three US soldiers died.
The Al Nujaba militia, one of the most prominent of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, took responsibility in a statement for several attacks that the group launched on January 28 against US positions in Syria and Iraq, including one directed, they stated , against the Al Tanf base, on Jordan's border with Syria, “which caused the death and wounding of more than 50 American soldiers”
“This operation is a short introduction to the hell of Islamic Resistance operations in Iraq,” the group warned.
The attack is a major escalation of the already tense situation in the Middle East, where war broke out in Gaza after the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed. Israel's subsequent attack on Gaza has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to the local Health Ministry.
Read alsoFrom Gaza to Yemen and Pakistan: flashpoints of tension spread across the Middle East
Since then, US forces have been attacked more than 150 times by Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria, causing at least 70 casualties before Sunday's attack, most of them traumatic injuries. American warships have also been assaulted by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, who regularly attack commercial ships passing through the Red Sea waters off the coast of Yemen.
While the United States has so far maintained an official line that Washington is not at war in the region, it has been retaliating against Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria and carrying out attacks on Yemen's Houthi military capabilities.
“We will continue our commitment to fighting terrorism. And we have no doubt: we will hold all those responsible accountable when and in the manner we choose,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday, January 28. .
#bombs #militias #Iraq #Syria #retaliation #attack #Jordan
