“The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue,” said a statement from National Safety Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson released Monday.
She was referring to a “one-way attack drone” that targeted U.S. military personnel in northern Iraq and injured three servicemembers early Christmas morning. One of the servicemembers was critically injured.
Watson said that Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia, claimed responsibility for the attack. In response, U.S. President Joe Biden directed strikes against three locations utilized by Hezbollah and affiliated groups focused on drones.
“U.S. military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq,” said a Monday statement from Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. “These precision strikes are a response to a series of attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias, including an attack by Iran-affiliated Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Erbil Air Base earlier today, and intended to disrupt and degrade capabilities of the Iran-aligned militia groups directly responsible.”
While Austin said the U.S. does not seek to escalate conflict in the Middle East, where the Israel-Hamas war has been raging since October, he did stress that Biden and the military are prepared for further efforts to protect troops and facilities.
Shortly after Hamas – a terrorist organization that receives funding from Iran – sparked the current war in the Middle East with a large-scale attack on Israel in October, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made ominous comments on Al-Jazeera TV and said that the scope of the war would inevitably be expanded. This month, the Iran-backed Houthi group was linked to attacks on vessels in the Red Sea that occurred around the same time that a U.S. Navy ship was attacked there.
As Israel continues its war to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, the United Nations and other groups have warned about a humanitarian crisis there for civilians in the region who have been displaced or who have not been able to escape the warfare. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke via phone this week with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan this week to discuss the ongoing conflict and “the importance of increasing the speed and scale of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.”