WASHINGTON (CN) — President Joe Biden on Friday ordered retaliatory strikes on Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, a potential escalation of tensions in the Middle East.
The strikes were announced after President Joe Biden attended the transfer of the bodies of three Georgia-based Army Reserve soldiers who were killed in a strike on a U.S. military facility in Jordan on Sunday.
“Our response began today,” Biden said in a statement. It will continue at times and places of our choosing.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes hit seven facilities and 85 targets and “is the start of our response” as Biden has ordered “additional actions.”
“These will unfold at times and places of our choosing,” Austin said in a statement. “We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else, but the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces.”
Biden has said he is not seeking to escalate tensions in the region, but would respond to the attack.
“The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world,” Biden said. “But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond.”
More than 40 personnel were also injured in the attack over last weekend. Media outlets have reported that a drone approached the military outpost around the same time an American drone was returning to the base, causing uncertainty over whether it was hostile and delaying a response. The White House and Pentagon have declined to provide more information about how the attack was successful.
Biden said an Iran-backed militia group is behind the attack on the facility, which supports U.S. efforts to combat the Islamic State in the region.
It was the latest of multiple spillovers Washington is juggling from Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, including attacks on shipping in the Red Sea by the Houthis, rocket attacks on U.S. and allied facilities in Iraq and Syria and blows between Israel and Lebanon.
The U.S. has meanwhile carried out attacks on militant groups in Yemen and Iraq, but Washington has sought to separate those efforts from its full-throated support of Israel.
The Biden administration has sought to characterize its military actions since the Hamas attack as self defense, with U.S. and coalition forces coming under attack roughly 165 times since Oct. 17.
Biden, who in 2020 wrote online that “a president should never take this country into war” without congressional approval, has routinely ordered airstrikes in the Middle East without seeking legislative authorization. The White House, like the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, typically justifies the actions through the post-9/11 Authorization of Use of Military Force.
Republicans called for a response directly in Iran.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Biden should target Iranian oil and military infrastructure and “anything less will be seen as weakness" and put Americans at risk.
“It is long past time for this regime to pay a heavy price. All the attacks against American forces in the region are by Iranian-backed proxies,” Graham wrote online. “It is clear the Iranian regime wants to drive us out of the Middle East so they can implement their twisted desire to dominate Islam.”
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