The US has launched airstrikes against Iran-backed militants in eastern Syria after an American contractor was killed and five soldiers wounded by a drone strike on a coalition base in the Arab country.
The Pentagon said US intelligence had suspected that the drone that targeted an American base in Syria on Thursday was of “Iranian origin”, pointing to the risk of rising tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The US struck a targeted facility used by groups linked to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, the Pentagon said in a statement.
“The airstrikes were carried out in response to the current attacks as well as several recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC. [Revolutionary Guards]”said US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Iran has had a military presence in Syria since intervening in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after civil war erupted in the country in 2011.
The US has around 900 troops in Syria, mostly in the northeast, where it is fighting against Isis and supporting Kurdish-led militants fighting jihadist groups.
“As the President [Joe] Biden has been clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend the people and will respond at the time and place we choose,” said Austin. “No group will attack our forces with impunity.”
Iran-backed Shiite militants in Syria and Iraq, where the US has about 2,500 troops, have stepped up attacks on American personnel and assets in both countries after US president Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from the nuclear deal Tehran had signed with world powers and implemented. a wave of sanctions against Iran.
Biden took office promising to reduce tensions in the region and return the US to the 2015 agreement and lift many sanctions on Iran if the country returns to the deal.
But indirect talks between the Biden administration and the Islamic Republic to revive the moribund deal have stalled after Iran upset western powers by not agreeing to a draft proposal to save the deal in September.
Iran’s relations with the west have further deteriorated after the US and European governments widely condemned Tehran’s crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted last year. The West has been angered by Tehran’s decision to sell armed drones to Moscow used by Russian forces in the war in Ukraine.
Iran has denied allegations that it has sold weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, while blaming foreign enemies for stoking civil unrest in the Islamic republic.
In January, concerns grew that Tehran had moved closer to enriching uranium at the weapons-grade level after the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, found particles of enriched uranium at a purity of 84 percent in Iran’s nuclear facilities.
It is unclear whether the particles were part of a deliberate plan by Iran to increase enrichment or were created accidentally. Most experts consider 90 percent purity to be weapons grade.
The Pentagon said the US “took proportionate and deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize casualties” in Thursday’s airstrikes in Syria.
Biden previously ordered strikes against Iran-backed militants in Syria in 2021 and 2022 after similar attacks on US personnel.