President Joe Biden has ordered retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia groups after three US soldiers were injured in a drone strike in northern Iraq
From
AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press
December 25, 2023, 10:25 p.m. ET
• 3 min reading
WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. military to carry out retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia groups after three U.S. soldiers were injured in a drone strike in northern Iraq.
National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said one of the U.S. soldiers suffered life-threatening injuries in the attack early Monday. The Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups under an umbrella of Iran-backed militants claimed responsibility for the attack, which used a disposable attack drone
Biden, who is spending Christmas at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, was alerted to the attack by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan shortly after Monday's attack and ordered the Pentagon and its top national security advisers to come up with response options to prepare for the attack on the Erbil air base.
Sullivan consulted with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Biden's deputy national security adviser Jon Finer was with the president at Camp David and convened senior advisers to consider options, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.
Within hours, Biden convened his national security team for a call during which Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed Biden on response options. Biden chose to target three sites used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, the official said.
The U.S. strikes were carried out in Iraq around 4:45 a.m. Tuesday, less than 13 hours after the attack on U.S. personnel. According to U.S. Central Command, the retaliatory strikes on the three sites “destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah fighters.”
“The president places no higher priority than protecting American personnel who are at risk,” Watson said. “Should these attacks continue, the United States will act at a time and in a manner of its choosing.”
The latest attack on US troops follows months of escalating threats and actions against American forces in the region since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that sparked the devastating war in Gaza.
The dangerous back-and-forth attacks have escalated since Iran-backed militant groups under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria umbrella group killed hundreds of people on Oct. 17, the day an explosion at a Gaza hospital killed hundreds of people came, began attacks on US facilities. Iran-backed militias have carried out dozens of attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began more than two months ago.
The US has also blamed Iran, which has funded and trained Hamas, for attacks by Yemen's Houthi fighters on commercial and military ships through a critical shipping chokepoint in the Red Sea.
The Biden administration has sought to prevent the war between Israel and Hamas from escalating into a larger regional conflict that would either open new fronts of Israeli fighting or draw the U.S. directly into the conflict. The government's measured response – not every attack on American troops was met with a counterattack – has drawn criticism from Republicans.
The U.S. has thousands of troops in Iraq, training Iraqi forces and fighting remnants of the Islamic State group, and hundreds in Syria, mostly as part of the anti-IS mission. They have been subjected to dozens of attacks since the war began on October 7, but none have been fatal so far, with the US attributing responsibility to Iranian-backed groups.
“While we are not seeking to escalate the conflict in the region, we remain committed and fully prepared to take further necessary actions to protect our people and facilities,” Austin said in a statement.