‘It was very much a defensive operation,’ Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said of the unilateral strike in Syria against pro-Iran targets in retaliation for deadly rocket attacks in Iraq.
THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT on Friday stood by its strike the night before against what officials say was an Iranian-backed militia position in Syria, despite international criticism and growing skepticism in Congress about its legality.
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“The purpose for striking these targets was twofold: One, clearly, to try to make an impact on these groups and their ability to conduct future attacks,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday afternoon. “And two, to send a very clear signal that the U.S. is going to protect its people, it’s going to protect its interests and it’s going to protect its partners in the region.”
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“It was very much a defensive operation,” Kirby said, “as well as to send a strong signal about our resolve.”
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Two F-15E Strike Eagles dropped seven precision-guided munitions on a “terrorist entry control point” at Abu Kamal on the Syrian side of the Iraqi border, Kirby said, to target a waypoint for militia groups — Kataeb Hezbollah and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada — that the U.S. says are backed by Iran. The strike destroyed nine buildings and damaged two others.
Kirby did not say whether the U.S. is aware of any casualties from the strike, as the assessment is ongoing. However, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Friday morning that at least 22 militiamen died in the strikes.
The strike was in retribution for at least three rocket attacks against a series of Iraqi installations that also house U.S. forces or contractors serving in the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group and other extremists there. A strike near Irbil in northern Iraq killed at least one American contractor.
The U.S. until Thursday had declined to name who it believed was responsible, though American and officials in Iraqi Kurdistan — where one of the attacks took place — said privately almost immediately after the Feb. 15 attack that Iran orchestrated it. Kirby and other officials had said the U.S. was waiting for its Iraqi partners to conduct investigations before it would release what it knew about the attack’s perpetrators.
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Containing Iran, its nuclear ambitions and its support for proxy forces throughout the Middle East has received widespread support across the political divide in the U.S. However, multiple leading Democrats broke with President Joe Biden by Friday morning over what they consider muddy legal justification for the strikes in Syria and the precedent it sets for continuing what they consider “forever wars” in the region, despite his intent to pursue a diplomatic track with Tehran.
“Congress should hold this administration to the same standard it did prior administrations, and require clear legal justifications for military action,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said in a statement, “especially inside theaters like Syria, where Congress has not explicitly authorized any American military action.”
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia also said Friday that offensive military action without congressional approval “is not constitutional, absent extraordinary circumstances.”
And analysts say the Biden administration needs to do more to expose Iran’s culpability for strikes like the one this month.
“The inability to point a finger at the patron for all these Iraqi proxies, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be a problem” for the administration, says Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “as the Iran threat and militia threat do not exist in a vacuum from one another.”
Neither appeared to have known about the strike in advance. Kirby said Friday that defense officials had briefed congressional leaders about the strike before it took place and that subsequent briefings to other members and their staffs would take place on Friday and over the weekend.
And he pushed back on claims the strikes were not legal, citing the president’s Article 2 power under the Constitution that provides him the authority to take actions to protect American forces in combat and Article 51 of the U.N. Charter that grants nations involved in military operations the right of self defense.
Critics, however, point to the fact that these strikes took place in a separate conflict zone from where the rocket attacks took place — also an indication of the complex legal authorities the Obama administration adopted to first justify extending its war against the Islamic State group into Syria in 2014.
Some have also speculated that the Biden administration chose its targets carefully, fearing that direct strikes against militias in Iraq would only inflame tensions and lead to a cycle of escalation between those groups and the Americans currently stationed there.
Kirby on Friday declined to say whether the U.S. was any more willing to conduct strikes in Syria compared to Iraq, saying, “I won’t speculate at all about future operations or future decisions with respect to protecting our troops in Iraq.”
He also would not say why the U.S. chose targets in Syria rather than elsewhere.
“This was about hitting a compound, structures, facilities, that we know belong to these groups,” Kirby said, “It was very much about taking out a capability.”
“We’ll see to what degree there’s a reaction to that.”
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Many Republicans in Congress lauded Biden for his decision to launch the attack.
“Responses like this are a necessary deterrent and remind Iran, its proxies, and our adversaries around the world that attacks on U.S. interests will not be tolerated,” Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “I thank the president and our service members for protecting Americans overseas.”
Among the other international critics of the strikes was Russia, which also has a heavy military presence in Syria in support of its allies in the central government in Damascus. Foreign Ministry Sergei Lavrov slammed the U.S. for, as he said, only giving Russian forces four or five minutes’ notice before carrying out the strikes, which he considers insufficient for deconflicting with the Russian presence there.
“I’m grateful the foreign minister confirmed what I’ve been saying for the last couple of hours, that they were, in fact, informed through the deconfliction channel,” Kirby said, adding the U.S. gave “proper amount of notification before this.”
Paul D. Shinkman, Senior Writer, National Security
Paul Shinkman is a national security correspondent. He joined U.S. News & World Report in 2012 … READ MORE
Tags: Syria, world news, foreign policy, military, military strategy, Pentagon, Department of Defense
