The risk of regional conflagration is not decreasing.
The United States announced this Friday that it had carried out strikes targeting elite Iranian forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for a drone attack in Jordan that killed three American soldiers last Sunday .
According to the White House, the operation was a “success”.
Who was targeted?
The White House said US warplanes targeted a total of 85 targets at seven different locations - three in Iraq and four in Syria.
The American armed forces targeted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Iranian regime, its Quds Force which is its elite unit and pro-Iranian armed groups.
At least 18 pro-Iranian fighters were killed by these strikes on eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) reported.
According to security sources, positions of pro-Iran armed groups in western Iraq, on the Syrian border, were bombed.
Joe Biden did not order direct strikes on Iran, as some Republican opponents demanded.
The Democratic leader apparently did not target Iranian officials either, as his predecessor Donald Trump did in January 2020, by killing Qassem Soleimani, the former architect of Iranian military operations, in a strike in Baghdad. in the Middle-East.
What is the Iraqi reaction?
Baghdad denounced a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty”, while the United States claimed “to have warned the Iraqi government before the strikes”.
The American president declared on Friday that “the United States did not want conflict either in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world” and the White House repeated after the strikes that it did not want a “war” with Iran , with which they have no longer maintained diplomatic relations since 1980.
Why are these strikes happening now?
Joe Biden, campaigning for a second term, pledged to respond to the death of three American soldiers killed Sunday by a drone strike in Jordan, near the Syrian border, where 350 soldiers are stationed as part of the fight against the Islamic State group.
The United States blamed Iraqi armed groups supported by Iran.
American forces in Iraq and Syria have suffered at least 165 drone attacks or rocket attacks since mid-October, according to an official, but Sunday was the first time that American soldiers lost their lives.
Joe Biden warned that the United States' “response” had “started today” and that “it would continue according to the timetable and in the places” that Washington “decides”.
“We do not want to see another attack against American positions or military personnel in the region,” warned the White House National Security Council.
Increasing regional tensions
Regional tensions have continued to rise since the bloody attack by Hamas, supported by Iran, against Israel, followed by incessant Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip.
Also read: Hezbollah, Houthis, Shiite militias… these pro-Iran groups blowing up the embers in the Middle East
Through its diplomacy and its 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 to a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, supported by Iran.
But Washington, with the support of London, resorted to military action against the Houthis, pro-Iranian Yemeni rebels who launch attacks against merchant or military ships in the Red Sea.
Many experts in Washington believe that Iran will not take the risk of a direct conflict with the world's leading power, but that the country has strengthened itself since the war in Gaza and its support for Hamas by rallying more support in the Arab world.