Clashes between U.S. troops and Iran-backed militias in Syria this month have prompted new scrutiny of the Pentagon’s mission in Syria, as tit-for-tat strikes threaten to escalate tensions in the region.
The U.S. decision to target facilities in eastern Syria on Tuesday — which officials say had been used to launch attacks against U.S. forces by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — threatens to heighten tensions with Iran as the two countries try to reach a deal to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
“Iran’s malign activities are increasing on a number of fronts right now,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council and a former high-ranking Pentagon official. “And to the degree that there’s anyone in the IRGC that thinks that as they increase the amount of malign activities that they’re doing in the region, that an appropriate thing on the list is to also target Americans, they need to be dissuaded.”
The United States has long maintained an unofficial policy that when provocations put American lives at risk, they demand a response. In recent months, as the attacks escalated however, the Biden administration has wrestled with when to respond and how to avoid sparking a wider conflict, according to officials and analysts.
President Biden’s order to strike targets belonging to Iranian-backed groups reflects a decision to act — “to protect and defend the safety of our personnel, to degrade and disrupt the ongoing series of attacks against the United States and our partners, and to deter the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from conducting or supporting further attacks on United States personnel and facilities,” the president said in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Since Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla took over U.S. Central Command in April, there has been a push to ensure that Iran cannot carry out attacks against U.S. forces and assets with impunity, according to a person familiar with planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The sense is that doing nothing will lead to more attacks, the person said, posing risks to U.S. forces that outweighs any danger of potential escalation.
The U.S. strikes drew an almost immediate response from the militias, which fired rockets into Green Village and a Conoco gas field in Deir el-Zour in northeastern Syria, injuring three U.S. troops. The United States responded with a barrage of counterfire, using heavy artillery, gunships and attack helicopters to destroy rocket launchers. Four Iranian-backed fighters were killed, the Pentagon said.
Officially, the United States is in northeastern Syria to counter the Islamic State, a holdover of the multiyear campaign to destroy the terrorist group. The current mission is considered to be “noncombat,” but U.S. forces often come in to conflict with other forces — including the militias aligned with Iran.
That can pose complications and risks, said Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, who previously served as a staff member at the Pentagon and in Congress.
“Just because it’s a noncombat mission doesn’t mean that those forces aren’t somehow at risk,” Lord said.
That reality has prompted fresh concerns from some lawmakers, who worry that a new, more aggressive approach to Iran — while justifiable under the president’s constitutional powers as commander in chief — could lead to further fighting.
“It is past time for a rethink about the wisdom of having so many Americans so thinly spread across the region,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a statement Thursday, noting that while Biden’s actions this week were commendable, “I remain concerned about any decision to undertake unauthorized military action when the Constitution and the War Powers Act require the President to come to Congress to obtain that authority.”
The decision to strike Iran drew criticism this week not just from Democrats concerned about escalation on the battlefield, but also from Republicans, who saw Iran’s actions this week as reason to abandon nuclear negotiations.
“These attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. servicemembers show why we CANNOT cut a bad nuclear deal with #Iran,” Rep. Michael McCaul (Tex.), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in a Twitter post this week. “The Biden administration must walk away from this bad deal that will fuel Iran’s terrorist attacks on U.S. soldiers and civilians.”
Others in the GOP also raised recent attacks and plots against Iranian dissidents and critics in the United States — attempts on the lives of former national security adviser John Bolton and women’s rights activists Masih Alinejad — to argue against a nuclear deal.
“Iran’s attempts to assassinate American officials and dissidents on American soil should immediately disqualify them from any sanctions relief from the United States,” said Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Ala.), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
Pentagon officials said the clashes in Syria and nuclear negotiations are separate issues.
“Separate from the JCPOA, we will defend our people no matter where they’re attacked or when they’re attacked, so the two really are not interrelated,” said Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, referring to the Iran nuclear deal by an acronym for its official title, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “My hope would be that these groups would have received the message loud and clear, and that we will not see similar behavior in the future.”
Lord said it is unlikely the attacks this month in Syria are related to the nuclear negotiations. Iranian officials, he said, are “just not that well coordinated,” especially since the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
“Some of the things that we’re seeing may or may not be directly ordered by Iran, because these guys have some independent agency, as well,” Lord said of the militias.