The strikes are the first known military action under President Joe Biden. The site was not specifically linked to the rocket attacks, but is believed to be used by Iranian-backed Shi militias operating in the region.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the strikes took place “under President Biden” and were not only authorized to respond to recent attacks on US and coalition forces, but to deal with “ongoing threats to those staff”. .
Kirby said Biden carried out the strikes after consulting with U.S. allies, including coalition partners.
“Specifically, the strikes destroyed several facilities located at a border checkpoint used by a number of Iranian – backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al Shuhada,” Kirbry said. “The operation sends a clear message; President Biden will act to protect the US coalition staff. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner aimed at unraveling the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”
The website is believed to be used as part of an arms smuggling operation by the militias. The strikes were carried out to weaken the ability of the groups to carry out future attacks and to send a message about the recent attacks, the US official said.
The decision to target the site in Syria was taken from the bottom up, a defense official said, and was not due to a specific recommendation from the military.
The strikes come as Washington and Tehran position themselves for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, which could complicate an already fragile process.
The US has not definitively blamed any specific group for the rocket attacks, or attributed them to Iranian proxies in the region, but the government has made it clear where they place the blame.
Earlier this week, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was holding Iran accountable for its actions.
A civilian contractor was killed in a rocket attack on 15 February on coalition forces near Erbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, injuring four U.S. contractors and a U.S. official. At the time, Psaki said Biden and the administration “reserve the right to respond in a manner and at a time of our choosing.”
“We will respond in a way that is calculated according to our timetable and uses a mixture of tools, seen and unseen,” Psaki told reporters, a day after Biden spoke to the Iraqi prime minister, a discussion that largely focused on the rocket attacks. “What we will not do, and what we have seen in the past, is make an escalation that is playing into the hands of Iran by further destabilizing Iraq, and that is our priority,” Psaki added.
The US strikes come as Washington and Tehran position themselves for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, which could complicate an already fragile process.
The administration has made it clear where they blame the attacks, which took place amid growing concern that Iran or its proxy would take revenge to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
“We said earlier that we would hold Iran accountable for the actions of its proxy attacking the United States,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ned Price said on Monday, noting that “many of these attacks used Iranian-made , and provided Iranian weapons. ‘
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh denies any ties to the February 15 attack in Erbil and Iran has not claimed responsibility for any of the other strikes. “Although these rumors are strongly rejected, the dubious attempt to attribute them to Iran is also strongly condemned,” Khatibzadeh said according to a report by Iran’s official news agency Mehr on February 16.
This story is breaking and will be updated