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The White House on Monday accused Iran of “actively facilitating” attacks against US troops in Iraq and Syria as Washington pledges to continue its support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
The White House publicly called out Iran as rocket and drone barrages launched by Iran-backed militias continued targeting US troops in Iraq and Syria on Monday amid Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We know that Iran is closely monitoring these events and in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks and spurring on others who may want to exploit the conflict,” White House National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters.
Pentagon press secretary US Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said earlier on Monday that the US has not seen Iranian leadership directly order the militias to launch the renewed spate of attacks. “That said, by virtue of the fact that they are supported by Iran, we will ultimately hold Iran responsible,” Ryder said.
The sharpening of Washington’s messaging came as the Pentagon continues to rush forces to the region to deter the spread of opportunistic attacks driven by Israel’s war in Gaza.
The self-styled Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella term for various Iran-backed militias, claimed credit in statements on social media for additional drone attacks targeting the al-Asad airbase in Iraq on Sunday as well as a US base at al-Malikiya and the al-Tanf garrison in Syria on Monday.
Those alleged attacks followed a series of small barrages late last week which Pentagon officials initially hesitated to link to the war in Gaza despite clear public threats by Iran-backed factions over US support to Tel Aviv.
As of publication time, the Pentagon had not yet issued a full accounting of the incidents, but officials said there had been no additional deaths and cautioned against false reports circulating online. Ryder on Monday morning confirmed the attack on the al-Tanf garrison, saying US troops had shot down two drones, resulting in no casualties, and acknowledged there had been other attacks over the weekend.
The USS Eisenhower carrier strike group, originally bound for the Mediterranean, is being redirected to the Gulf region along with an undisclosed number of Patriot missile defense batteries and a THAAD system to protect US forces at airbases around the Middle East, the Pentagon announced Sunday.
“We don’t want to see our forces or our personnel come under fire, but if that happens, we’re ready for it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin warned the military “won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action” amid what he described as the “prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region.”
Austin placed an additional personnel on prepare-to-deploy orders over the weekend, most of whom are command-and-control units to enable US commanders to leverage the capabilities offered by the carrier strike groups, according to a senior US military official who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.
A strike group led by the Pentagon’s largest carrier, the USS Ford, is already in the eastern Mediterranean along with additional US fighter aircraft deployed to the region. The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is also en route.
The overwhelming display of force has so far not halted the attacks. Telegram accounts associated with Iran-backed groups published statements claiming credit for what were described as additional drone attacks on US bases at Shadadi and Green Village on Monday night, which were not publicly confirmed by the US military as of publication time.
“That is a clear indicator that additional force protection measures are needed,” the senior US military official said of the continued attacks.
Iran’s well-armed networks of militias from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Yemen haven’t been shy about issuing public threats against US military forces in the Middle East in recent weeks if Washington furthers its support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Yet defense officials on Monday signaled Washington would continue providing unfettered support for Israel’s campaign against Hamas even as the Biden administration sought to stay an IDF ground incursion for now amid significant concerns within the Pentagon of wider regional conflagration.
“I warn the US and its proxy Israel that if they do not immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza, anything is possible at any moment and the region will go out of control,” BBC quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as saying during a press conference in Tehran on Sunday.
Axios first reported Monday that senior US military officials, including US Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Glynn – former deputy commander of the US special operations task force involved in the Battle of Raqqa against the Islamic State in northeast Syria — are advising Israeli forces on the Gaza campaign.
A Pentagon official speaking on the condition of anonymity to reporters on Monday stopped short of confirming details of Axios’ report, but acknowledged that top American military officers with experience in counterterrorism operations in urban environments have been advising the IDF.
News of the advisory mission comes as doubts have grown among senior American military officials about the IDF’s capability to launch and sustain a successful mechanized ground invasion of Gaza to eradicate Hamas, Al-Monitor has learned.
Those concerns have only grown in recent weeks amid conversations with senior Israeli military brass, two well-placed US sources told Al-Monitor.
The Pentagon’s advising is likely designed to provide Washington a closer degree of influence over IDF thinking about the operation, but is also likely to be portrayed by Iran and its proxy militias as further evidence of a US green light should Israel launch a ground campaign.
“The Israel Defense Forces need to decide for themselves how they’re going to conduct operations,” Kirby told reporters Monday, adding, “We’re not in the business of dictating terms to them.”
The Gaza Health Ministry placed the death toll on Monday at more than 5,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombardment in the besieged enclave. More than 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas militants earlier this month in the worst terror rampage ever carried out on Israeli territory.
As civilian deaths have mounted in Gaza, Biden administration officials have increasingly issued public statements cautioning Israel about its planned operation, even after the Pentagon said there would be no conditions placed on US weapons delivered to Israel. American officials have also reportedly grown concerned that Netanyahu’s government does not have a plan for administering the already impoverished enclave after the invasion.
“Our partner Israel is a law abiding countries which is obligated to adhere to the law of armed conflict,” the senior US defense official reiterated to reporters Monday.
Meanwhile, Washington has sought to contain the regional fallout from the war. On Friday, the US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Carney intercepted a lethal barrage of four cruise missiles and some 19 drones over the Red Sea. The Pentagon said Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels had fired the projectiles northward, “potentially towards targets in Israel.”
In Iraq, US officials have been pressing for local security forces to help prevent attacks on diplomatic facilities and bases used by coalition troops. Both Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and top diplomat Antony Blinken called Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Monday. Austin “thanked the prime minister for today’s announcement reaffirming his government’s full commitment to protect US forces who are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government,” the Pentagon said in a press release.
Former US national security officials told Al-Monitor they don’t believe Iran wants a regional war involving the United States, but expressed concern that the posturing may leave no off-ramp either for Israel or for Iran and its proxies, with thousands of American troops potentially caught in the middle.
“The administration would like to resume and even double down on normalization and a regional security construct tying Israel and the Saudis together, but there is a real concern that the Israelis will go too hard and overplay their hand,” Joe Buccino, who served as top spokesperson at CENTCOM until earlier this year, told Al-Monitor.
“The images and videos that follow out of Gaza are going to be gruesome. That will make it really hard for any Arab countries to publicly embrace Israel in the days and years to come,” Buccino said.
There are also doubts as to Israel’s ability to fight a multi-front war. To Israel’s north, Hezbollah’s massive arsenal remains a top concern for White House and Pentagon officials.
After shifting 155mm artillery shells from a forward US stockpile in Israel to US stocks in Europe amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia, the Pentagon has returned those munitions back to Israel, the senior defense official confirmed today.
Should the Lebanese Shia faction unleash full-scale barrages into Israel, the implications for regional conflict would be “enormous,” said Gen. Joseph Votel (ret.), who commanded all American forces in the Middle East as head of US Central Command 2016-19.
Such a move would likely encourage other IRGC-backed groups to join in attacks on Israel and US forces, and could potentially draw in Iran. “This would be like pouring gas onto a fire,” Votel told Al-Monitor.
“I think we should be very concerned about force protection threats if Hezbollah goes all in,” Votel said, citing the 2019 Aramco attack as an example of “how devastating an Iranian cross-Gulf attack could be.”
US forces at major bases in the Gulf have hardened their defenses in the years since Iran fired at least a dozen ballistic missiles at the al-Asad airbase in Iraq in retaliation for the Trump administration’s assassination of then-IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020, Al-Monitor’s sources said.
Yet US defense officials have said Iran maintains the Middle East’s most formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, and has smuggled such weapons to militias in countries with weak or collapsed central governments to build leverage over the US and its allies in the region.
“It is always important to respect our adversaries,” Votel told Al-Monitor.
