The Pentagon said on Wednesday night that the US launched more airstrikes in eastern Syria that targeted a facility used by “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups.”
“This strike was conducted by two US F-15s against a weapons storage facility,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement. He said the strike was “a response to a series of attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by IRGC-Quds Force affiliates,” referring to the Shia militias that operate in both countries.
The US launched similar airstrikes on October 27 in an attempt to “deter” further attacks on US forces in the region. But the rocket and drone fire on US bases has not stopped. At least 41 attacks have been reported since October 17, injuring at least 45 US troops.
An umbrella group of Shia militias that calls itself the Islamic Resistance of Iraq has taken credit for many of the attacks on US bases. The militias receive support from Iran, but it’s unclear if Tehran is directing the attacks. The Pentagon previously acknowledged it had no evidence of direct Iranian involvement.
For their part, Iran has denied any role in the attacks on US troops. Responding to US allegations, Iran’s representative to the UN said Tuesday that Tehran “has never been involved in any actions or attacks directed at the United States military forces in Syria and Iraq.”
There are no reports of casualties yet in the US strikes. If IRGC personnel were hit, it would risk a huge escalation with Iran.
Austin said the US urges against escalation, but it’s unlikely the Shia militias will back down as the US continues to support Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. “The United States is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities. We urge against any escalation. US personnel will continue to conduct counter-ISIS missions in Iraq and Syria,” Austin said.
Also on Wednesday, Israel launched airstrikes in southern Syria, and ISIS attacks were reported in desert regions, killing 26 members of a pro-government militia and four Syrian soldiers.
“strikes targeted a facility used by Iran’s IRGC and affiliated groups, referring to Shia militias”
Yes make sure the Pentagon uses the word Iran in all press releases to move America closer to war with Iran.
No more American troops being killed in the Middle East for the wealth guys on Wall Street!
Good point. The US famously used the Mujahedeen to wage war against Russia in Afghanistan. But I don’t recall any talk about them being an affiliated group of the US Military. More recently, we’ve used the Kurds as our surrogates in Iraq and Syria.
“Somehow”, US weapons and weapons from Libya after Khadaffi was assassinated, ended up in the hands of ISIS and other terrorist groups. Does that suggest these groups are “affiliated” with the US? Rumor has it that Khadaffi’s weapons were being smuggled to Syria through Benghazi.
Benghazi was a conduit, and those fellows who attacked the “embassy” knew it. The place was crawling with CIA agents, with some being wounded in the firefight.
The US did not send the two Carrier groups to the MidEast to help Israel. They are gunning for Iran and have been ever since the revolution kicked out the Shah.
Having flown off of a carrier and operated off the coast of Israel and Lebanon the two carrier groups in the Eastern are their to protect Israel. To get to Iran a strike group would have to fly over Syria and Iraq avoiding SAMs all the way. Turkey would not allow overflight so that route is out.
Desperate. Very desperate. All Russians or Chinese need to do now is bomb Pentagon bases in Syria or sink some Pentagon boat in South China Sea to show entire world that Uncle Shame is nothing but a cowardly terrorist. That is if US will survive the shock politically. I have a feeling they are planning something like it for the so-called ‘election’ .
The US needs to reevaluate what its positions are in the Middle East and in addition its true overall aims. If we keep conducting these kinds.
of strikes, at the rate we are going, plus with our continued support for Israel, we could find ourselves in a full on war…
Donna, who would the war be with?
Iran….Perhaps countries they are aligned with…
That is possible. Well Iran did attack our airbase when Trump was President and Trump did nothing about it. However, Iran attacking a US asset right now would get a different response from Biden.
Is Biden even in charge? Who is really running the show?
Biden can barely read his notes, is he able to make decisions?
I very much agree.
Don’t be silly. Biden is clearly running the show. And unlike Trump, he will not permit Iran to freely attack a US asset without paying a price. Trump was like a deer in the headlight when Iran dropped a dozen or so missiles on a US air base after Trump ordered the killing of an Iran official. Trump never figured Iran would respond and thus he had no plan. What a dummy.
Biden made a catastrophic mess in Ukraine and Gaza, not to mention Afghanistan. We are paying a big price for it. It will be the end of the EU and NATO. The ME is already in ruins, it is not just Biden’s fault, but he took part in the destructions and continued it.
We have had horrible governments since 1980. Since the war in Vietnam and the Kennedy assassination it has been steady down hill.
I would go back a bit further. Since Wilson. Ike was OK, but he had his blemishes, like coup in Iran, getting involved in Vietnam with “advisers” and money for France.
Ike knew who has the real power and made an effort to warn the nation.
Sure, a deranged president would do the right thing, like in Ukraine and Gaza, and Afghanistan, and a deranged mind is pushing for war with China too.
We need a president with simple common sense, Biden does not have it. He was supporting the invasion of Iraq and the regime change in Ukraine, responsible for the sabotage of the pipeline, destroying the EU economy and NATO. A trail of destruction and that is good?
Trump would have known the other side would pay back in some way, no need to start a war. War monger Biden would have gotten us in a war and that would have served what? Biden diplomacy, right?
Common sense is not so common. Now Biden has become a war criminal.
I am so p*ssed at him that I would love to knock those aviator sunglasses off of his head. I am just as p*ssed that I voted for him. I had a Faustian choice, though.
I feel the same way, I deeply regret my vote for him and condemn the party establishment to make him the candidate, they must have known of his dementia and they knew he is a dyed in the wool neocon, and our so-called free press journalists worked for big money to manipulate public opinion, as they always do.
And the same Faustian choice could come up again, what can we do, stay home or vote a write in?
Thank God Trump had enough sense and did not panic, he did assassinate the Iranian General. Biden would react militarily to gain what? Another war would be as stupid as stupid can be.
“Trump had sense”. LOL No he panic and did not know what to do. Trump has no sense of national security as proven by his talking about miliary secrets at one of his parties.
Trump even tells the truth sometimes. Biden and the neocons have no sense of national security, they know how to sell guns financed with the tax payers CC and so did Trump.
“Trump even tells the truth sometimes” LOL.
Biden openedd the borders wide to allow narco-terrorists, assorted criminals, Hamas,IRCG, and Hezbollah easy access into the US.
Sure, if by “opened the borders wide” you mean “massively escalated interceptions, abductions, and cagings of travelers at the border while continuing construction of Trump’s East German style wall.” Otherwise, not so much.
Biden has no sense of national security either. If he had, he would treat allies like allies and not like the enemy.
I would think assassinating the general of another country IS an act of war.
True, but to respond in panic is just bad government, a lack of simple common sense, to say the least.
It absolutely is!
It was but he was so confident that Iran would do nothing, that he was unprepared. By shear luck no US soldier died.
You don’t know much about that attack. For example, it’s not much of an attack if you give the U.S. heads up about bombing the airfield with zero causalities.
Zero killed not zero causalities. It has never been accurately determine how the US got warning of the attack. In any case, millions of dollars of damage was done, and it showed the world how weak a leader Trump was.
And when Israel tells the citizen of Gaza to leave a building and then flatten it, by your definition that is not much of an attack.
Iran attacked our airbase after we killed Qasem Soleimani, head of the IRGC.
Just a minor omission on his part. /s
You did not read all my posts in this threat.
You’re right. I made my comment based on the comment I read first.
Did you skip my post where I said ” Trump was like a deer in the headlight when Iran dropped a dozen or so missiles on a US air base after Trump ordered the killing of an Iran official”
I wouldn’t say skipped, rather missed. My bad, a waste of both our time.
He had one of their generals iced.
Turkey and Hezbollah would most likely support the Palestinians. It would be the end of NATO.
Turkey is not going to go to war with Israel. They are not going to leave NATO. Just another anti Israel dream you guys keep coming up with.
You are underestimating Turkey and Erdogan. Turkey is a Muslim nation, after the US the biggest military NATO power, he knows to serve his people first.
Yes, Israel/Washington has make it a Conflict of Civilizations.
But not get them into a maelstrom.
I’m underestimating Erdogan. He smart enough to know the price of going to war against Israel is not worth the cost. He not going to do it. No nation with the exception of Iran is going to risk going to war with Israel.
When you have friends like the US you don’t need enemies. Biden is a bully and not well liked. The US is isolating itself.
Wow, what world do you live in?
I agree with that.
Anti Israel dreams are not so evil as pro Israel dreams. That’s why most people prefer anti Israel dreams.
The problem is not dreams-it is hate-hate that says the Oct 7 pogrom was CGI or self inflicted,settlers in the West Bank who hate their neighbors.
Turkey, likes to dish it out hard but can’t stand taking it. So that threat by Erodgan is just fantasy.. Also, NATO won’t end if Turkey is out. It will end when U.S. walks away.
The US already started walking away, the pipeline sabotage was a DECLARATION of WAR on Germany and the EU. Most EU members are also NATO members. EU members refusing to sanction Russia were sanctioned by the EU members. Europeans are not NATO partners they are vassals, the clean up crew picking up refugees the failed US policies created in the ME and N. Africa and funding US wars.
The Ottoman Empire lasted about 400 years. The US is how old?
Except it was meant private I’d date the Declaration at Mme Nuland’s 2/14 unambiguous “F… the EU!”
And secondly, I think you have to talk in terms of Anglo-imperialism which goes back a ways; and has always entailed contesting the Continent.
You said it, Anglo-Imperialism, going back to the end of the 19th century industrial era and the Bismarck Germany before WW I.
Anglo-Saxon strategy in European direction was announced about 75 years ago and it never changed: “Keep Germans down, Russians out and Americans in”. EU is subordinated to Anglo-Saxons. Last 30 years they forced Germans and other prosperous Europeans to finance former Warsaw Pact countries in order to drag them from under Russian influence into EU and thus make of them US vassal states. It helped both to keep Russians out and Germans down. The war in Ukraine serves for the same goal. That’s why in April 2022 they sent Boris Johnson to Kiev to sabotage a peace agreements.
And out of the years of our existence, we have not been at war somewhere for 16 of those years. Quite a record, eh?
We don’t even know that for sure.
NATO will end when someone does something stupid. Russia will light up the EU, U.S.
Well said.
Turkey supports the Palestinians. Go to war for them? I think not.
First Hezbollah will wait until Hamas get a good bashing, only then it may start to act.
Erdogan cares only about his image in Muslim world. His support of Palestine will be reduced to a furious rhetoric, nothing else.
Erdogan and Hezbollah do consider their Muslim people, what is wrong with that?
Biden cares about his image in the eyes of his campaign financiers and so does every elected official, regardless of party.
Hezbollah yes, they are fighting for Muslim people. Erdogan is far-right Turkish nationalist. He can act as well against interests of Muslim people if it fits his agenda. He is a person with criminal mentality the same as the vast majority of western politicians. Though, of course, they have a different motivation.
Our presidents are expected to be nationalists, that is what MAGA is all about, the great exceptional nation # 1 and so on.
Already have one against Russia. Starting one with China, beginning with Trump tariffs.
Iran,China,North Korea,Russia perhaps some people in South orv Central America. Shit anybody will,do.
We are constantly “reevaluating”. What places to go to, how badly to mess those places up. How to make bank for the MIC. Yes, reevaluating we are…………constantly.
“we could find ourselves in a full on war…”
And that is not according to plan how …? War and chaos are the health of the state, especially this one. Why else are these tripwire troops there in the first place?
No shit Donna.
The United States of Atrocities will choke on Moscow’s terms for peace in Ukraine. Make no mistake its a huge defeat for Nazism and NATO.
And BIDEN personally. He could have avoided it.
Will the Sicilian expedition spell the end of The Empire? … wonderful how history’s end mirrors its beginning, no?
It starts with a big bang and ends with one to..
Sayonara, y’all.
Maybe Biden could retire on Elba island like Napoleon? He should like that.
The U.S. is descending to joke status
A pretty sick joke…………………….
About as funny as a child sized coffin.
At the moment, for the lack of coffins, they bury children enveloped in a piece of cloth in Palestine.
US did not have very far to go.
Defeat applies to those who have humility. NATO/US will find another way around this temporary setback.
Yes, the Neocons will blame the pol-scum and the D pol-scum, the R pol-scum.
That’s redundant.
Both Nazism and NATO are serving for promotion of democracy. Their defeat in Ukraine is defeat of democracy. At least so it will be interpreted by the corporate media.
They have an ass kicking coming I hope. Maybe they will start leaving other countries alone although the chances of that happening are rather slim.
On September 7, 2023, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a presentation to the European Parliament, formally acknowledged that: “the war didn’t start in February last year. It started in 2014.”
Speaking on behalf of NATO, what this statement implies is that US-NATO was already at war in 2014. It then follows that Russia did not “initiate the war” on Ukraine in February 2022.
In a perverse irony Stoltenberg portrays “the purpose” of the Ukraine war as a means “to prevent war”.
https://youtu.be/yNdHaDhIVdI
About 15 minutes into this video Jens Stoltenberg states: “And the third thing was that NATO Allies have really now demonstrated that they are delivering on the commitment we made in 2014, because the war didn’t start in February last year. It started in 2014.”
“The United States is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities.” People & facilities the US wouldn’t have to protect if we didn’t have 800+ bases and 150K+ military stationed around the world.
“Our facilities” in Syria. WE were not invited there, we are there to protect the outgoing shipments of Syrian oil, and just to be a burr in Assad’s shoe. We still want to depose him. For what, so that Syria could wind up like Libya? Sad that even super progressive Bernie Sanders said that “Assad must go” a few years ago.
I differ,Bernie is not all that progressive. He supports military actions.
Destabilization is part of how we keep these countries under our thumb.
Misleading title…! AW should not merely copy and use unproven US official statement as titles…!
Austin said the US urges against escalation, but it’s unlikely the Shia militias will back down as the US continues to support Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. “The United States is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities. We urge against any escalation. US personnel will continue to conduct counter-ISIS missions in Iraq and Syria,” Austin said.
LLoyd almost forgot the usual bullshit as to why the US is Iraq and Syria.
It is simple OIL.
It’s all fun and games and target practice until Syria switches on its air defense grid and defends its airspace as it should.
How is Syria going to defend its airspace? With what? Their air force? No. SAM missiles? Fire one of those at USA or Israel plane and that will be the end of those missiles sites.
NATO in Ukraine has already lost; 532 Aircraft, 254 helicopters, 8733 UAV’s, 441 Anti Aircraft systems, 13266 tanks inc. APC’s, 1182 multiple rocket launchers, 7016 field artillery and 15086 military automotive equipment. Approx. $1 Trillion of NATO hardware.
WW3 started in Ukraine in 2014 according to Jens Stoltenberg NATO Secretary General. The combined Western NATO nations overthrew the government in a violent bloody coup and installed Nazi’s in power.
These people are monsters, parasites on humanity, total psychopaths.
Are you speaking about the Fascist Ukrainians or the murderous USA?
Sure, and don’t forget Santa Claus was also shot down last year in Ukraine.
USA/NATO massacred the Ukrainian nation FOR NOTHING. Biden could have avoided the war, Ukraine could be a neutral at peace nation and now look what the Americans did to Ukraine.
But blood thirsty Biden neocons could not even end the war when it was already lost, they kept killing the nation. Only sadistic people can support that kind of slaughter of a nation. Add Gaza to it.
Our leaders just can’t wait to get a full blown World War III going.
The leaders of the Western so-called democracies are war criminals.
The whole world is watching the MASSACRE of the PALESTINIAN NATION, the massacres of civilians, women and children. The suffering without food, water and medical care, torture before the murder. What other torture can the Zionists come up with next.
It takes sadistic sick people to watch it and stay silent, how evil the Israelis and Western people are. Hitler was not unusual after all, he has plenty of company.
Zelenski’s only option now is say hes pregnant and the baby is Bidens. What a joke it all has become. Monsters are running the West.