US Central Command announced that its forces launched strikes in Syria for a second day on Tuesday against “Iranian-aligned” targets, referring to Shia militias that operate in the country.
CENTCOM said in a press release that its forces “conducted strikes against an Iranian-backed militia group’s weapons storage and logistics headquarters facility.” It said the strikes came after a “rocket attack on US personnel at Patrol Base Shaddadi,” referring to a US occupation base in eastern Syria.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the US strikes killed at least five members of “Iranian-backed” militias in strikes that targeted their headquarters in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, but the numbers haven’t been confirmed by any other source.
On Monday, CENTCOM said it launched strikes against “nine targets in two locations associated with Iranian groups in Syria,” which SOHR said killed four militia members. CENTCOM said these strikes were in response to attacks on US bases but offered no details.
Iranian media reported explosions at US bases in Syria on Monday, but there’s no sign there were any US casualties or damage to the bases. The US airstrikes risk escalation and further attacks as the region is on edge amid anticipation of a potential Iranian attack on Israel in response to Israeli airstrikes that hit Iran on October 26.
The US has about 900 troops in eastern Syria as part of an illegal military occupation and backs the Kurdish-led SDF, allowing the US to control a significant portion of Syrian territory. US troops in Syria and the 2,500 US soldiers in Iraq are vulnerable to attack and could be a tripwire for a wider war.
From October 2023 until February of this year, US bases in Iraq and Syria came under hundreds of rocket and drone attacks due to US support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. After three US troops were killed in an attack on Tower 22, a secretive base in Jordan on the Syrian border, Iran and the Iraqi government pressured the militias to stop, and the attacks have been less frequent since February.
Since October 2023, President Biden has ordered multiple rounds of airstrikes against the Shia militias that operate in Iraq and Syria, which include members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a wing of Iraq’s security forces. Iraq strongly opposed the US bombings of the PMF and called for an end to the US-led coalition. The Biden administration refused to leave and instead negotiated a deal to officially end the mission of the coalition by September 2025 that allows US troops to remain under a different arrangement.
