BEIRUT, Lebanon – Since President Biden entered the White House, Iranian-backed militants in the Middle East have attacked Saudi Arabian airports with exploding drones, accusing them of killing critics in Lebanon and targeting U.S. military personnel at the airport. In northern Iraq, a Filipino contractor was killed and six others were injured.
On Thursday, the world got its first glimpse of how Mr. Biden is likely to reach the biggest security concerns of American partners in the region: a network of militias backed by Iran and committed to undermining the interests of the United States. And his allies
U.S. officials say an overnight airstrike ordered by Mr. Biden hit a collection of buildings on the Syrian side of the border with Iraq on Thursday and targeted members of the Iranian-backed military group Katab Hezbollah and its affiliates.
A Hezbollah official said one of his group’s fighters was killed in the airstrikes. But Iranian state television and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based conflict monitor, reported that 17 militants had been killed in air strikes near Abu Kamal in Syria across the border from Iraq.
Although the exact death toll remains unclear, Mr Biden appears to have calibrated the strikes, hoping they would do enough damage in the hope that the United States would not allow a rocket attack on Erbil airport in northern Iraq on February 15. Not so much the risk of stopping widespread confusion.
“It’s kind of their first red line,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
He said the strike signaled to Iran that his eagerness to return to the nuclear deal would not allow Mr Biden to ignore other regional activities by Iran and its allies, especially attacks on the US military.
“It’s sending a message: the main thing is that we will not tolerate this and will use military force when we think you have crossed this line,” Ms. Yahya said.
According to the Saberin news channel on the telegram used by Iran-backed groups, Milliaminen has fled six of the seven buildings hit in the strike after being believed to be an American surveillance plane.
In a sign of tensions between the Iraqi government and Iranian-backed groups that are also part of the Iraqi security forces, Sabri said the U.S. strike was helped by an Iraqi intelligence officer who stood out as a shepherd.
In an interview with a local television network on Thursday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said there were no more terrorists who called themselves “resistance” and launched rocket attacks on Iraq.
Mr. Hussein’s remarks “gave the green light to the international community to target and eliminate terrorism under the pretext of terrorism.”
“We see these attacks as attacks on the Iraqi government,” Hussein said in a recent interview with the New York Times, referring to attacks on the US embassy and other US targets. Mr Hussein has some Iraqi officials who have traveled to Iran in recent months and tried to persuade him to use his influence to rein in the military.
“I and others went to Tehran and had a clear and open discussion with the Iranians.” “For that period, the attacks stopped.”
“After all, the realm of conflict is in Iraq,” Hussein said.
Senior officials have said they expect a further breeding policy by the Biden administration towards Iraq. Mr Hussein said Baghdad did not expect the administration to make Iraq a foreign policy priority, but said Mr Biden and the administration’s long experience with both Iraqi and Iraqi politicians would help relations.
Katab Hezbollah says it maintains a cross-border presence to prevent Islamic State fighters from infiltrating Iraq.
The Iraqi government has struggled to curb Iranian-backed military groups that have been gaining influence since joining forces to fight ISIS in 2014, when it occupied much of Iraq and Syria. The group lost its last leg two years ago, and many Iranian-backed paramilitary groups have joined Iraq’s official security forces.
Iraq has warned that the conflict on its soil between the United States and Iran threatens to destabilize the country.
Attacks on US interests in Iraq by the joint Iranian-backed military intensified after a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020 killed an Iranian general, Qasim Suleimani, and a senior security official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, a London-based policy group, said that in the past year, – It has become a playground and a battlefield for such activities carried out by Iran. “These groups began to spring up after the killings.”
“It’s a clear message: revenge for death is not enough.” “For them, time is not an issue.”
Mr Mansour, who oversees armed groups in Iraq, said the new groups appeared to be made up of heavily armed militants linked to paramilitary countries affiliated with Iran.
Some Iranian-backed paramilitary groups are on the Iraqi government’s payroll as part of the Iraqi security forces, but only under government control.
When the Biden administration began the difficult task of trying to restore the nuclear deal with Iran, President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the United States in 2018. The loot behind the question of the dimensions of the new deal is the issue of Iran’s volatile activities in the Middle East, especially for American allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Iran has spent decades building a network of partnerships with military groups in the region that have allowed it to assert power outside its sphere of influence. These groups include the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, several groups in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
All of these groups have received at least some funding, support, and weapons from Iran over the years, and all are fighting against its “resistance” ideology or the interests of Israel and the United States in the region.
The groups have developed many ways to create headaches for America and its allies at a much lower cost. Hezbollah has become Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with Israeli and P-season fighters helping to recruit into the Syrian civil war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad with an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets.
Earlier this month, the group’s enemies in Lebanon accused the group’s publisher, filmmaker and vocal critic, Lokman Slim, of killing Gaman, who has close ties to Western officials. Hezbollah officials denied any involvement in Mr Slim’s killing.
In the days following Mr Slim’s death, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, whose Saudi-led Arab League has been bombing since 2015, targeted an airport in the Saudi city of Abha with an explosive-laden drone, damaging a civilian plane.
The Erbil rocket attack claim previously unidentified armed group called themselves blood guards. United States officials say he appears to be affiliated with one or more of Iraq’s more prominent military groups, and Thursday’s strike in Syria targeted facilities with them.
Ben Hubbard Beirut, Lebanon and Jane Araf From Amman, Jordan. Falih Hassan Reported from Baghdad.
