Biden weighs striking Iranian proxies after attacks on U.S. troops

Biden weighs striking Iranian proxies after attacks on U.S. troops

Washington Post-Oct25th2023

President Biden faces mounting pressure to strike Iranian proxies that have repeatedly attacked — and injured — U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria this month, but he is weighing any decision to retaliate against his broader concern that the war in Gaza could be on the precipice of erupting into a regionwide tempest, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the administration’s deliberations.

Biden said Wednesday that he warned Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, that if Tehran continues to “move against” U.S. forces in the Middle East, “we will respond.”

The president’s disclosure, delivered while standing beside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the White House Rose Garden, followed reports that nearly two dozen American troops were hurt within the last eight days after 14 or more aerial assaults on their bases in Iraq and Syria. An additional attack was recorded Wednesday, after three rockets were launched at a U.S. outpost in northeast Syria and one landed inside, a defense official said. No one was reported injured.

A senior administration official, who like some others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. government calculations, said that “nothing has changed about our prerogatives” to protect deployed service members, but “we’re also not blind to the fact that there are other forces at work now, and we want to be informed by what else is going on in the region.”

As the administration has surged combat power and defensive equipment to the Middle East, Republicans in Congress have implored Biden to respond to the attacks. They were joined on Wednesday by retired Gen. Joseph Votel, whose final posting, as the head of U.S. Central Command, afforded him firsthand insight into Iran’s support for militia groups throughout the Middle East. Votel, whose reputation as a nonpartisan military commander earned him admirers in Democratic and GOP administrations, said during an online panel discussion that the United States has “unfortunately” allowed the attacks to become “a little bit of a norm” by not responding to them uniformly.

“We will have to do that,” Votel said. “I think we are at the point where we can probably do that now, and we should.” With the additional military assets dispatched to the region, he added, “we can and should respond more directly to these threats on our troops.”