Washington: As the war continues between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the United States and Iran have now opened another battlefront in the Middle East, this time in eastern Syria.
Alleging a series of attacks against its personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria by militia groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the United States conducted targeted strikes against facilities used by IRGC and its affiliated groups in eastern Syria on the night of October 26, 2023. These facilities in eastern Syria were used by these groups for command and control, munitions storage, and other purposes.
The USA warned that it stands ready to take further action, as necessary and appropriate, to address further threats or attacks.
“The strikes were intended to establish deterrence and were conducted in a manner to limit the risk of escalation and avoid civilian casualties,” US President Joe Biden stated in a letter to the Speaker of the US House and President pro tempore of the Senate on October 27, 2023.
Biden said he directed the targeted strikes because, since October 17, 2023, these militia groups had conducted “numerous” attacks using unmanned aerial systems and indirect fire, injuring several United States service members. A United States contractor suffered a fatal cardiac incident while moving to a shelter during one of these attacks. “These attacks have placed under grave threat the lives of United States personnel and of Coalition forces operating alongside United States forces,” Biden said.
“I directed the strikes in order to protect and defend our personnel, to degrade and disrupt the ongoing series of attacks against the United States and our partners, and to deter Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from conducting or supporting further attacks on United States personnel and facilities,” he stated.
The US President claimed that he took “this necessary and proportionate action consistent with international law and in the exercise of the United States’ inherent right of self-defence as reflected in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter”.
It may be mentioned that the USA and its allies accuse Iran of patronising and arming terror outfits Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen. Iran has been equally critical of the US role in Israel, and only recently, after the conflict between Israel and Hamas flared up, Iranian President Dr Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi questioned the functioning of the UN Security Council, and told the visiting Minister of Foreign Relations and International Cooperation of South Africa, Naledi Pandor, on October 22, 2023, “When the United States, by sending equipment and weapons to the Zionist Regime, participates in its crimes against the defenceless people of Gaza and prevents the issuance of a resolution condemning these crimes in the UN Security Council, there is no hope for this council to play a role in maintaining world peace”.
Yesterday, in a meeting with the visiting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Niger, Mr Bakary Yaou Sangaré, the Iranian President described the “crimes of the Zionist Regime in Gaza and the support of the Western countries for these crimes as the true face of the racism and colonialism of the Westerners in recent era”.
Dr.Raisi has held that the recent developments in Palestine and the implementation of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood [the coordinated terror attacks by Hamas from the Gaza Strip onto bordering areas in Israel on October 7, 2023, is referred to as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood] by the Palestinian resistance groups “are a reaction to the continued occupation of the Zionist Regime and widespread violations of the basic rights of Palestinians, including their right to life’. He has warned that the “criminal, insane and illegal actions of the Zionists against the oppressed people of Gaza will not only help to solve the problem, but will also intensify and expand the scope of conflicts to other parts of the region”.
– global bihari bureau
