The United States carried out strikes against elite Iranian forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for a drone strike in Jordan that killed three American soldiers on Sunday.
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Here's what we know at this point:
The White House said American warplanes struck a total of 85 targets in seven different locations – three in Iraq and four in Syria – and the operation was a “success.” American forces have targeted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian regime's ideological army, its Quds Force, an elite force, and pro-Iranian armed groups.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), at least 18 pro-Iranian fighters were killed in these attacks in eastern Syria. Security sources said positions of pro-Iranian armed groups in western Iraq on the Syrian border were bombed. Baghdad denounced a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty,” while the United States claimed to have “warned the Iraqi government of the attacks.”
Joe Biden did not order attacks on Iran, as some Republican opponents demanded. The Democratic leader also appears not to have targeted Iranian officials, as his predecessor Donald Trump did in January 2020 when he killed Qassem Soleimani, the former architect of Iranian military operations, in an attack in Baghdad in the Middle East.
The American president declared on Friday that “the United States does not want a conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world,” and the White House reiterated after the attacks that it does not want a “war” with Iran, with which it have no conflict and has no longer maintained diplomatic relations since 1980.
Joe Biden, who is running for a second term, vowed to respond to the deaths of three American soldiers killed in a drone strike on Sunday in Jordan near the Syrian border, where 350 soldiers are stationed in the fight against the Islamic State group .
Their bodies were repatriated on Friday.
The United States has pointed the finger at Iraqi armed groups backed by Iran.
American forces in Iraq and Syria have suffered at least 165 drone or missile attacks since mid-October, according to an official, but Sunday was the first time American soldiers were killed.
Regional tensions have continued to rise since the bloody attack on Israel by Iran-backed Hamas and the subsequent incessant Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip.
Through its diplomacy and military presence in the region, the United States has been trying for nearly four months to prevent the conflict between the Jewish state and the Palestinian Islamist movement from spreading to Lebanon and becoming a conflict between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah leads.
But Washington, backed by London, has taken military action since October 7 against Yemen's pro-Iran Houthi rebels, who are launching attacks on commercial or military ships in the Red Sea.
Joe Biden warned that the United States' “response” “began today” and that “it will continue according to the schedule and in the places” that Washington “decides.”
“We do not want to see another attack on American positions or military personnel in the region,” the White House National Security Council warned.
Many experts in Washington believe that Iran will not risk direct conflict with the world power, but that since the war in Gaza and its support for Hamas, it has strengthened itself by gaining further support in the Arab world.