The United States launched attacks in the Iraq and Syria on Friday, its first retaliatory strikes for the killing of three American soldiers, according to a U.S. defense official.
The military action is a significant escalation in Washington’s bid to deter the growing threat from Iran-backed groups across the Middle East — a step fraught with risk abroad and at home, as President Joe Biden seeks to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider conflict while working to secure his re-election.
The Biden administration had made clear that the U.S. would take military action after the drone attack by Iran-backed militants at a remote U.S. base in Jordan, in which more than 40 others were wounded.
Before the strikes, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had promised a “multitier response” and officials told NBC News that Biden settled on a plan expected to unfold over multiple days, possibly weeks. American forces are expected to hit targets in different countries outside Iran, U.S. officials said.
Even as Biden and his deputies vowed to retaliate, they have added the caveat that Washington does not seek a war with Iran or a wider conflict in the region. Their calibrated statements appeared to indicate that it was unlikely the reprisal strikes would hit targets inside Iran itself.
“We will continue to work to avoid a wider conflict in a region, but we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our interests and our people,” Austin told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Thursday.
Iran has denied involvement in the drone attack and said it, too, does not seek a direct confrontation with the U.S.
After previous attacks by Tehran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria that wounded but did not kill some American troops, Biden ordered airstrikes that targeted the militants’ weapons depots and other sites. But the pace of rocket and drone attacks dramatically increased after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli…
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