Amid the swirling violence that is the Middle East, a Saturday attack in Syria has brought promises of revenge as U.S. forces in Iraq also came under attack.
Iran said that it would make Israel pay after a Saturday missile strike on a Damascus, Syria, location killed five members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Damascus and several Syrian troops, according to CNBC.
Israel did not openly take credit for the attack in keeping with its standard policy, the Times of Israel noted.
On Saturday, Iranian-backed groups attacked al-Assad Airbase with ballistic missiles and rockets, according to U.S. Central Command.
The CentCom statement said there was damage to the base and indicated some U.S. troops were being evaluated for traumatic brain injuries.
The New York Times reported that a top Iranian intelligence official was killed in the Damascus strike.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not leave the crimes of the Zionist regime unanswered,” Iranian state news media quoted President Ebrahim Raisi as saying.
His statement called the attack the “cowardly assassination of five of Iran’s most distinguished advisors,” according to the BBC.
The “terrorist and criminal” attack “shows the height of [Israel’s] desperation and weakness against the combatants of the resistance front,” the statement said.
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London-based Iran analyst Mehrdad Khonsari said the Damascus attack was likely retribution for Iran’s role in planning attacks within Israel, according to the Voice of America.
“The ensuing goings on in Gaza have obviously accelerated and increased the number of Israeli attacks on such targets, some of which are a response to actions being taken by these elements who have hit against Israeli locations where people live on the Israeli side of the Syrian border, across from the Golan (Heights), and more importantly across the Lebanese border, given the fact that supplies for Hezbollah in Lebanon come through Syria,” Khonsari said.
During an interview on the ABC program “ This Week,” Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser, called Saturday’s attack “a very serious attack using a capability of ballistic missiles that pose a genuine threat.
“Through the skill of U.S. forces, many if not most of those missiles were shot down before they impacted the base, but some of them got through,” he said.
“And the United States has demonstrated in the past, when these attacks have — have taken place in Iraq and Syria that we are going to respond. When we deem it’s necessary to reestablish and try to establish deterrence in these situations and to hold these groups accountable that continue to attack us,” he said.
Finer indicated the U.S. would have more to say on the subject.
“I’m not going to get ahead of any decisions the president may make, but you can be sure that we are taking this extremely seriously and we’ll have more to say about it soon,” he said.
The Washington Post reported that Saturday’s attack was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an assemblage of Iran-backed militia groups.
In a statement, the group said the strike was part of the broader resistance against the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as a response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
