US faces danger from ‘not-so-good’ Iran-backed insurgents

As of February 7, there have been more than 168 attacks on the US military (representative)

Washington:

More than a month after a deadly drone strike in Jordan killed three U.S. soldiers, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sought to reassure U.S. troops of their capabilities to defend themselves against an attack by Iran-backed rebels.

In unpublished remarks Dec. 20 to sailors aboard the USS Gerald R. “.

“Every day, Iranian proxies are shooting at our troops in Iraq and Syria. They’re simply ineffective for two reasons: One, they’re not very good at what they do,” Austin told reporters. crew.

“But number two, we’ve done a lot to make sure we have adequate force protection…Ultimately, as we all know, one day they might be lucky enough to injure one of our troops. But we’re going to stay put in our on the balls of your feet and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

In the wake of the drone strikes, President Joe Biden’s administration has vowed to do whatever it takes to protect U.S. troops from an escalating cycle of violence in the Middle East, with Iran-aligned insurgents attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere Fire. Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

But current and former U.S. officials told Reuters that given the sheer volume of drones, rockets and missiles fired at U.S. forces and the fact that base defenses are virtually impossible to be fully effective 100 percent of the time, the rebels’ periodicity in attacks Success may be inevitable.

Experts also warn against underestimating Iranian-backed operatives, even if most of their attacks fail.

Charles Lister of the Washington-based Middle East Institute recalled how former President Barack Obama described the Islamic State as a junior varsity team in 2014. Organizations are gathering strength.

“The Obama-esque suggestion that ‘well, they’re just a JV team’ and we can laugh and take the hit and know nothing serious happened is just so naive,” Lister said. “These groups conduct sophisticated, cross-border attacks, and they have a very lethal history against U.S. forces.”

Still, U.S. commanders have a long history of showing courage in front of their troops. Austin, a retired four-star general who served in Iraq, has been under attack himself.

Asked for comment, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Austin was angry and deeply saddened by the deaths of the Jordanian soldiers and that “nothing is more important than protecting our troops and taking care of our people.”

Tragic but unpredictable

Since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October, tensions in the Middle East have increased. As of February 7, there have been more than 168 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. This resulted in injuries to 143 U.S. service members, two seriously and nine critically.

The most serious attack occurred on January 28, when a drone crashed into a U.S. base called Tower 22 on the Jordanian-Syrian border, killing Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Specialists Laden Sanders and Brenna Alexandria Moffitt lost their lives.

A senior U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity called the attack “tragic, unfortunate — but foreseeable.”

“Because that’s the nature of combat,” the former official said. “This is not a sanitized environment where you can be perfect in protecting yourself.”

Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the head of the U.S. National Guard stationed at Tower 22, told reporters Thursday that the military is working to ensure troops have defensive capabilities to reduce risks.

“Unfortunately, no system is 100 percent successful at anything,” Hokanson said.

Not a complex hit

While the U.S. military investigation continues, U.S. officials told Reuters that several factors may have contributed to the failure of U.S. defenses at the remote base in Jordan.

Most notable, they said, was the low-altitude flight of the drone as it approached Tower 22.

But officials said the rebels did not appear to have taken any particularly sophisticated action Sunday morning, such as deliberately timing the drone’s approach to coincide with the arrival of U.S. drones to confuse U.S. defenses.

Instead, some U.S. officials have concluded that the success of the Jan. 28 attack depended on probability — throw enough munitions at a well-defended target and some will eventually succeed.

The Pentagon said the attack left a “footprint” of Iraq-based Kataeb Hezbollah, leading to a wave of US retaliatory attacks in Iraq and Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the militias it supports. . These include a drone strike in Baghdad on Wednesday that killed a Kataib Hezbollah commander.

Pentagon spokesman Ryder told Reuters that the U.S. military continues to “take necessary steps to protect our troops who serve in harm’s way and is constantly reassessing our force protection measures.” He did not provide information on U.S. defense measures, citing operational security. Details of any adjustments.

Critics of the Biden administration’s approach have warned that retaliatory attacks have not put enough pressure on Tehran, which supports the groups, and some current and former officials believe it may instruct them to stop. Some Republicans in Congress have pushed for U.S. strikes against Iranian forces, including on Iranian soil, but the Biden administration has resisted over concerns about drawing Iran directly into a broader war.

“Iran could prevent these attacks if they wanted to,” the former U.S. military official said.

But, the official added: “Why are they doing this? They are not harmed by our response.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)