US retaliatory airstrikes on targets in Iraq and
Syria will not be the last
Julian
Borger
World
affairs editor
The carefully planned raids were the largest yet
against Iran’s proxies and are likely to continue until threats to US personnel
are neutralised
Middle East
crisis – live updates
Sat 3 Feb
2024 01.06 CET
US
retaliation, when it came, was broad and deep, and telegraphed five days in
advance.
The White
House, the Pentagon and state department had spent the best part of a week
talking about the response to Sunday’s drone attack on a US base in northern
Jordan, which killed three Americans and wounded more than 30.
They warned
that retaliation against the suspects, primary among those the Iran-backed
Kataib Hezbollah militia, would be “multi-tiered” and continue over many days,
but when the opening salvo came in the early hours of Saturday Middle Eastern
time, it still caused some surprise in its range and scale.
According
to US Central Command, 85 targets were hit in seven facilities, four in Syria
and three in Iraq, with more than 125 precision munitions, using a mix of
drones and long range B1 bombers flying from US territory in a demonstration of
the reach of the US air force.
“Tonight’s
strikes in western Iraq eastern Syria are FAR bigger than any action undertaken
before against Iran’s proxies – huge secondary explosions on both sides of the
border suggest big rocket/missile depots have been hit,” Charles Lister, senior
fellow of the Middle East Institute, said on the social media platform X.
Joe Biden
said the targets were facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) and “affiliated militia”, and he made clear that it was just the
beginning. The full response for the attack on the Tower 22 base would
“continue at times and places of our choosing”.
The limits
of the response were as clear as its scale. As expected, no targets were hit on
Iranian territory, and senior administration officials made clear Iran was out
of bounds for any future sorties as well.
“The goal
here is to get these attacks to stop. We’re not looking for a war with Iran,”
John Kirby, the national security spokesperson, said.
Meanwhile,
the five intervening days since the Tower 22 attack had reportedly given time
for the withdrawal of key IRGC officers. The Pentagon said that the timing of
the strikes was determined by the weather. The planners had waited for the
skies to clear to be absolutely certain of their targets so that civilian
casualties would be minimised.
As for the
question of whether the delay had allowed the IRGC to pull its people out of
danger, Lt Gen Sims, the director of operations of the Joint Staff, pointed out
that the militias attacking US targets would have scattered as soon as their
weapons had been fired, so the number of days’ pause did not make much
difference. The impact of the overnight strikes, Gen Sims said, was to
significantly degrade the IRGC arms stockpiles.
Overall,
the US response was calibrated to minimise the risk of a direct US-Iran
conflict, while maximising the destruction of weaponry Iran has stockpiled in
Syria and Iraq.
It is
notable that three of the targeted facilities were in Iraq. There had been some
speculation that the US planners might avoid that, as Baghdad’s permission for
a continued US troop presence involved in pursuing Islamic State is under
review after a prior US strike on Iraqi soil.
The White
House said that the US informed Baghdad ahead of the strikes; nonetheless an
Iraqi army spokesperson said they constituted “an assault on Iraq’s sovereignty
and an insult to the government”.
While
risking a war with Iran was clearly a red line in the planning of this
response, the risk of further complicating the relationship with Baghdad was
clearly not a barrier. It is the US assessment that the Iraqi government is
ultimately reliant on American soldiers to keep Islamic State at bay.
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