A suspected Iranian-made drone strike killed a US contractor and wounded six other Americans in northeastern Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon said, and the US military has opened fire on a missile strike in Syria used by groups linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. responded to the airstrikes. Activists said at least four people were killed in the US bombing.
While it is not the first time the US and Iran have carried out strikes in Syria, the strikes and the US response threaten to derail recent efforts to defuse tensions in the wider Middle East, whose rival powers have clashed after years in recent weeks. Have taken steps towards dentent in days. upheaval.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the US intelligence community had determined that the drone was of Iranian origin, but provided no other immediate evidence to support the claim. Drones attacked a coalition army base in the city of Hasakah in northeastern Syria. The injured included five US service members and one US contractor.
Austin said the attacks were a response to drone strikes by groups affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, as well as recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria.
Iran relies on a network of proxy forces through the Middle East to counter its arch regional foes, the US and Israel. The US has had forces in northeast Syria since 2015, when they deployed as part of the fight against the Islamic State group, and has kept about 900 troops there, working with Kurdish-led forces that control Syria’s border. controlled about a third of the shares.
Activists said US airstrikes targeted three towns in eastern Syria. Overnight, videos purported to show explosions in Deir al-Zor, a strategic province bordering Iraq and containing oil fields, appeared on social media. Iranian-backed militia groups and the Syrian army control the region, which has seen suspected airstrikes by Israel in recent months, reportedly targeting Iranian supply routes.
According to a defense official, the US retaliatory strikes were carried out by F-15 fighter jets taking off from Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
Activist group Dare Azor 24, which covers news in the province, said the US strikes killed four people and wounded several others, including Iraqis.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, recorded the death toll from US strikes on 11 Iranian-backed fighters – including six at an arms depot in the Harbesh neighborhood of Deir al-Zour city and five others at military posts. Near the cities of Mayadin and Boukmal.
Observatory head Rami Abdurrahman said on Friday three rockets were fired at the al-Omar oil field in Deir el-Zour, where US troops live, in apparent retaliation for US strikes.
The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the activist report. Iran and Syria did not immediately acknowledge the attacks, nor did their officials at the United Nations in New York respond to requests for comment from the AP.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is suspected of carrying out attacks with drones carrying bombs across the wider Middle East.
The exchange of attacks came as Saudi Arabia and Iran were working towards reopening embassies in each other’s countries. The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen a Saudi embassy in Syria, whose troubled President Bashar Assad has been backed by Iran in his country’s long war.
The head of US Army Central Command, US Army General Michael “Eric” Kurilla, warned that his forces could launch additional strikes if necessary. “We are prepared for a range of options in the face of any additional Iranian strikes,” Kurilla said in a statement.
Addressing the US House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Kurilla warned lawmakers that “the Iran of today is exponentially more capable militarily than it was five years ago.” He pointed to Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and bomb-carrying drones.
Kurilla also claimed that since January 2021, Iran has carried out around 78 attacks on US targets in Syria.
Kurilla said, “What Iran does to hide its hand is used Iranian proxies.”
The diplomacy to descale the exchange appeared to begin immediately. Qatar’s foreign minister spoke by phone with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan as well as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirbadollahian, the Qatari state news agency reports. Doha has recently been a talking point between Iran and the US amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Austin said he authorized the retaliatory strike at the direction of President Joe Biden.
“As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to protect our people and will always respond at the time and place of our choosing,” Austin said. No group will fearlessly attack our soldiers.
The US under Biden has previously attacked Syria over tensions with Iran – in February and June of 2021, as well as in August 2022.
Darren Khalifa, a senior Syria analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said Thursday’s exchange of attacks came at a sensitive political moment due to “the overall deterioration of US-Iran relations and the stalling of nuclear talks”. Significant growth is not expected.
“Tit-to-tit attacks have been going on for a long time,” Khalifa said, though he added that they usually do not result in casualties.
While “there is a risk of an escalating cycle,” she said, “I think the Biden administration will no longer be eager to move forward in Syria and will instead have a relatively measured response.”
Since the US drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran has sought to “make life difficult for US forces stationed east of the Euphrates”, according to a study by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. said expert Hamidreza Azizi.
Azizi wrote in a recent analysis, “Iran increased its support for local proxies in Deir el-Zor while trying to ally with tribal forces in the region.” “Due to the geographical proximity, Iraqi groups have also intensified their activities along the border strip with Syria and in Deir al-Zor province.”
The attacks come during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Syria’s war began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests that shook the wider Middle East and toppled governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen. It later turned into a regional proxy conflict that saw Russia and Iran back Assad. The United Nations estimates that more than 300,000 civilians have died in the war. Those figures do not include soldiers and insurgents killed in the conflict; Their number is believed to be in the thousands.