Present and former U.S. officers expressed fears on Tuesday that Israel’s airstrikes on an Iranian embassy compound in Syria might escalate hostilities within the area, and immediate retaliatory strikes towards Israel and its American ally.
The officers stated the assault on Monday, which killed three generals in Iran’s Quds Power and 4 different officers, had dealt a critical blow to the power, the exterior army and intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Ralph Goff, a former senior C.I.A. official who served within the Center East, known as Israel’s strike “extremely reckless.”
“It should solely end in escalation by Iran and its proxies, which may be very harmful” to American troops within the area who could possibly be focused in retaliatory strikes by Tehran’s proxies, Mr. Goff stated.
Certainly, after the Israeli strike in Damascus, Syria’s capital, on Monday, American troops primarily based in southeastern Syria knocked down an assault drone, a Protection Division official stated. It was unclear if the drone was aimed on the U.S. forces, the official stated, talking on the situation of anonymity to debate operational particulars. If it have been, it will be the primary assault by Iran-backed militias towards American troops in Iraq or Syria in almost two months. No accidents or injury have been reported.
The official stated there had been no additional assaults in a single day, however that Pentagon officers have been monitoring the state of affairs carefully.
Mr. Goff stated the lethal strike in Syria suits Israel’s “longer-term technique of degrading” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Power unit, and “punishing them for ongoing plots to kill or kidnap Israeli Jews all over the world.”
In the yearslong shadow battle between Iran and Israel, Syria has been key terrain for Israel because it labored to degrade Iran’s skill to maneuver superior weaponry by land and air nearer to Israel’s borders.
“The strike yesterday is a big escalation and dangers tipping an already risky, unstable area into full-scale battle,” stated Dana Stroul, previously the Pentagon’s prime Center East coverage official who’s now on the Washington Institute for Close to East Coverage. “That is the Israeli model of the U.S. strike on Qassim Suleimani,” she stated, referring to the previous longtime chief of the Quds Power who was killed by an American drone strike close to the Baghdad airport in 2020.
