Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
In the overnight hours on Thursday, two United States F-16 fighter jets dropped their payloads on two locations in Eastern Syria. The targets: an ammunition and a weapons storage facility operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian-backed militia proxies. The precision airstrikes were retaliation for a series of rocket and drone attacks against U.S. military positions in Iraq and Syria .
Thursday night was the closest Washington and Tehran have gotten to a confrontation since the Israel-Hamas war erupted three weeks ago. U.S. bombs hitting Iranian assets might sound like a big deal, but it’s not unusual. The U.S. and Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq long ago settled into a strange but dangerous pattern: rockets and one-way attack drones slam into a U.S. base, only for the U.S. to respond with airstrikes.
Thus far, Washington has done this by projecting power in the region. Two carrier strike groups, F-16s, A-10s, Patriot missile defense systems, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, have either been deployed or are on their way. Biden has warned Iran not to get involved in the Israel-Hamas war and has reiterated that the U.S. will not hesitate to penalize any attacks on its troops.
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