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The United States Air Force attacked
Yesterday at Hungary time, the United States carried out an airstrike on the Syrian-Iraqi border, it was Joe Biden’s first military action since he was elected president.
The United States Air Force dropped seven bombs, Members of the Iranian-backed People’s Mobilization Forces (Hasd as-Saabi) were attacked. Several US media write that some of them belonged to a militia called Kataib Hezbollah (Brigade of the Party of God) and others belonged to Kataib Saiid Al-Suhada (Saiid Martyrs Brigade).
The United States has yet to officially release data that anyone was killed in the attack, but 17 people have lost their lives, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
The New York Times writes that the airstrike was limited and precise: the attack was carried out with 500-pound bombs and targeted mainly buildings. According to OSDH, ammunition trucks have also been destroyed. The unofficial border crossing between Syria and Iraq is regularly used for the smuggling of militants and weapons between militia groups between the two countries.
Hasd as-Saabi is a loosely structured armed organization of some 40 militia groups, mostly Shiite Muslims (and to a lesser extent Christians and Yazidis), with some 180,000 members in Syria and Iraq. The grouping was formed in 2014, as a kind of self-defense force against the Islamic State, the organization participated in countless clashes against the extremist Sunni organization. Hasd as-Saabi’s integration into the Iraqi force has also been debated for some time, but has yet to take place.
Hasd as-Saabit also has open support from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, but Israel has carried out several airstrikes against the organization in recent years as they see the Persian country using the militia as a surrogate army.
The United States also targeted Hasd as-Saab at least once when the Hezbollah Bridgád base under his umbrella was bombed in December 2019. Additionally, several of his commanders were lost when an American drone killed General Kasim Suleiman, the commander of the Kuds forces in Iran.
While Hasd as-Saabi as a whole has so far not been identified by the United States as a major threat, as it is a very diverse organization, the Hezbollah Brigade and its parent organization, Hezbollah in Lebanon, are also listed as terrorist organizations in several countries.
They responded to a previous attack
The attack was also personally ordered by Joe Biden, according to various US media outlets.
According to a Politico article, various war plans were placed on the president’s desk, and eventually Biden pointed to one that meant a “middle ground” between the other two directions. I don’t know what these other two options would have been, but presumably there was a more moderate and radical blow on the table. The preparation of the war plans took a week.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that “the target they hit was used by Shiite militias involved in last week’s attack,” while John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said. There was a “proportionate response” to last week’s attack, with which President Biden wanted to send a message that the United States is protecting the members of the military coalition serving in Iraq.
On February 15, a missile attack hit Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region. The attack killed a Filipino civilian coalition employee and wounded nine others, including a US soldier.
The missile attack was carried out by a group called Saraja Avlija Al-Dam (Guardians of the Blood) who promised more strikes against US targets.
The United States believes the little-known microorganism is just a front for the Hezbollah Brigade and the Asaib Al-Hakk (League of Truth), a militia trained by Iranian Kudi forces that also falls under the umbrella of the Mobilization Forces. Popular.
Erbil airport is one of three Iraqi bases where significant numbers of US troops are still stationed. The Trump administration has significantly reduced the size of the US contingent, saying Iraq no longer needs help to fight the Islamic State. A total of 2,500 US troops remained in Iraq and 500 in Syria, a country where the United States is helping train anti-government Syrian insurgents.
Strong message
The military attack divided analysts quite a bit.
Phillip Smyth, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Biden had taken a “golden step” with the bombing because sent a clear message to Iran that the United States would not sit idly by to attack its interests nor was the association with Iraq compromised by the bombing of Syrian territory. The Iraqi government’s relationship with Hasd as-Saabi is not hostile and a significant part of the organization is made up of Iraqi citizens whose bombing of Iraqi territory could have been a serious blow in the eyes of the government.
Phyllis Bennis, an analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies, however, condemned the move as “unnecessary, provocative and dangerous.”
Is that what “America is back” means?
Bennis asked.
After Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, he posted on Twitter that “America is back.” So many began to whisper that the interventionist policy of the United States and the recent wars in the Middle East had returned with her.
Part of the bigger picture is that the attack, while seemingly dramatic, does not at all mean that the United States wants to start another open war.
Biden’s main message on the whole thing is that
If you shoot us, we’ll shoot you back.
Biden attacked the irregular forces, a branch of them, made up mostly of radical Shiite militias and backed by Iran with weapons and training.
So far, it cannot even be said that Biden’s policy in the Middle East is much more aggressive than that of Donald Trump, who ordered hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State, in Afghanistan against the Taliban, in Yemen against the twenty insurgents, and many Africans against various insurgent groups in the country. As we wrote earlier, Hasd as-Saabi’s attack is nothing new either, as the United States had previously inflicted an airstrike on them under President Trump.
So there is no question, at the moment, that the United States is preparing to wage another offensive war in the Middle East, but
Biden made it clear that there would be a military response to the military provocation.
It is not yet clear what parties on the “other side of the trenches” – Iran, the Syrian government or Russia – will have to say about the long-term air strike.
Iran’s most interesting response will be, as Joe Biden promised to sit down and negotiate with the Persians on a nuclear deal signed in 2015 and then shot down by Trump, which could be difficult if the adok-kapok degenerates into indirect warfare. between the two parties.
Cover image: Spencer Platt / Getty Images
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