U.S. Strikes Target in Syria as Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Mideast Grow

Source CFR

The United States conducted a “self-defense strike” (NBC) on a weapons depot in Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said yesterday. The strike was a retaliation in response to more than forty attacks against U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed militias that have wounded over forty-six U.S. service members (NYT) since October 17. Iran-backed Houthi rebels also shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone off the coast of Yemen yesterday, the Pentagon said.?

As fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militant group Hamas continues to rage inside the Gaza Strip, French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting a humanitarian aid conference (AP) in Paris today that includes officials from Western and Arab countries, as well as the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations. Fighting terrorism “can never be carried out without rules,” Macron said. Israel opened humanitarian corridors (Times of Israel) inside Gaza repeatedly this week, and a UN humanitarian office said an estimated fifteen thousand people fled south inside of Gaza on both Tuesday and Wednesday.?

Analysis

“Both [Iran and its proxy Hezbollah]?have stressed that they do not wish to expand the war but could do so if Israel persists with its military campaign to wipe out Hamas and if civilian casualties mount,” CFR expert Ray Takeyh writes in this In Brief. “The credibility of [Iran’s] Axis of Resistance rests partly on Hamas surviving Israel’s retaliation.”

?“Macron was hoping to draw together some of the disparate individual national initiatives to help the people of Gaza, as well as to amplify the call for a humanitarian ceasefire that the UN security council has been unable to support because of political divisions in New York,” The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour writes.