US Military Launches Airstrikes in Middle East
The strikes are in retaliation for an Iran-backed drone attack in Jordan that killed 3 American soldiers.
A U.S. Navy fighter jet takes off from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea to conduct a mission against Iran-backed Houthi rebels on January 12, 2024.
The U.S. military is striking back at Iran-backed terrorist groups after Sunday’s drone attack that killed three American soldiers.
Fox News reports that U.S. airstrikes began taking place in Syria and Iraq on Friday afternoon. The specific targets are unknown as of this writing, but are presumably targeting the Iran-backed terrorist proxy groups responsible for both Saturday’s deadly strike in Jordan and more than 160 attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria since mid-October.
POLITICO reports that Friday’s airstrikes are “the first of what officials expect to be multiple rounds of retaliatory actions following the deaths of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan.”
Later the same afternoon, U.S. Central Command released a statement saying “U.S. military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from United States.”
“The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” CENTCOM added. “The facilities that were struck included command and control operations, centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups” sponsored by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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Earlier on Friday, President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were among those in attendance for a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base. During the solemn event, the flag-draped caskets of all three U.S. military heroes killed in Sunday’s drone attack in Jordan returned to American soil.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden attend the dignified transfer of the remains of the three soldiers killed in a drone attack at an outpost in Jordan last weekend. pic.twitter.com/A8s9hSwxrf
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 2, 2024
The most important guests in attendance were the Gold Star families of the three fallen U.S. Army Reserve soldiers.
- Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Carrollton, Georgia
- Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, Waycross, Georgia
- Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, Savannah, Georgia
Please keep the Rivers, Sanders and Moffett families in your prayers today — and every day.
Tom Sileo is a contributing senior editor of The Stream. He is the author of the forthcoming I Have Your Back, the recently released Be Bold and co-author of Three Wise Men, Brothers Forever, 8 Seconds of Courage and Fire in My Eyes. Follow Tom on X @TSileo and The Stream at @Streamdotorg.
