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WASHINGTON — One hundred and seventy.
That’s the Pentagon’s official count for the number of rocket, drone and ballistic missile salvos that have landed at or near US military outposts in Iraq and Syria since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023.
Many of the barrages consist of only one or two rockets. Most have missed their ostensible targets; dozens of others have been knocked out of the sky by US counter-drone missiles or electronic warfare systems.
With every salvo but one, militias backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have failed to kill American troops.
The change came late last month when an Iranian-made Shahed penetrated US air defenses at the remote Tower 22 outpost in northeast Jordan, killing three army reservists. CENTCOM is said to still be investigating, but officials have privately credited the infiltration to the drone’s unusually low altitude.
It’s a method the US military has seen the militias experiment with before, two officials told Security Briefing on the condition of anonymity.
Pursuing those responsible
President Joe Biden authorized his top generals early last week to hunt down those deemed responsible. On Feb. 2, the US launched an initial wave of airstrikes, killing at least 40 militia personnel across Iraq and Syria, by the Pentagon’s official estimate.
Then on Wednesday night, the US military assassinated a leading Kataib Hezbollah commander via drone strike in Baghdad.
“As soon as the opportunity presented itself, we took action,” a US official told Security Briefing.
American military officials claim Abu Baqir al-Saadi was Kataib Hezbollah’s top commander in Syria. There may be grounds to question that conclusion, but there’s no doubt he was a senior KH leader involved in drone operations. Local media reported that one or two other Kataib Hezbollah operatives may have been killed.
Biden administration officials aren't ruling out additional strikes — including to potentially target Iranian IRGC personnel — depending on the militias’ response. The question, of course, is what form that may come in.
So far there’s been little sign of militia retaliation.
The factions may be waiting for the second round of meetings between US and Iraqi officials over the future of the American troop presence in Iraq, scheduled for this Sunday.
Should that fail to produce a pronouncement of the end to the US-led coalition’s role in the country, drone attacks may well resume. And recent incidents suggest the militias may be honing new techniques.
Syrian Kurds under attack
Last week, following the initial wave of US retaliatory strikes across Iraq and Syria, an Iranian-made drone slammed into a training facility for Syrian Kurdish-led militia fighters near a US military base that occupies a major natural gas field in the Euphrates River Valley.
Six members of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed.
It marked the first time that Iran-backed militias have directly targeted the Kurdish-led alliance since Israel’s war in Gaza began, marking a potentially ugly turn.
Top SDF commander Mazlum Abdi says he believes the drone was fired from inside Syria. He suspects the complicity of forces loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime.
“We will retaliate in a proper way,” Mazlum told myself and a small group of other journalists via live feed in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
American military officials say it’s not clear whether the target was intentional.
“Based on my read … that drone was probably intended for Green Village,” Pentagon press secretary USAF Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Thursday, in reference to the adjacent US base.
Nonetheless, the SDF has vowed a forceful response, as Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman first reported.
Despite receiving arms, training, air and fire support from the United States military since 2015 in the shared fight to eradicate the Islamic State, the SDF may be on their own for this one.
The beleaguered Kurdish-led alliance has no counter-drone systems of its own, relying instead on American air defenses concentrated at a few remaining US outposts scattered across Syria’s far northeast.
The US military’s counter-drone systems are imperfect, as the lethal attack on Tower 22 demonstrated, and there’s no sign Washington has any intention to further equip the SDF.
“The Americans have always retaliated and hit back the Iranians, every time they were targeted,” Mazlum said Thursday. “This is a separate case … We believe that it is only us that need to respond,” he added.
