The figure that matters: 78. That is how many attacks Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on March 23, 2023, that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had launched against American forces in Syria since January 2021. The same day, another one landed, and this one killed.
A one-way drone struck a facility near Hasakah in northeastern Syria at 1:38 p.m. local time on March 23. It killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five American service members and a second contractor, the Pentagon said. U.S. intelligence officials said the drone was made in Iran and launched by a group sponsored by the Guard.
The response
President Joe Biden was briefed aboard Air Force One on his way to Canada, and he ordered a strike. About 12 hours later, at around 2:40 a.m. on March 24, two F-15E Strike Eagles hit two facilities in eastern Syria that Washington tied to the Guard. Biden later described them as sites for munitions storage and command and control. Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said initial indications were that both were destroyed, and that the U.S. was still counting any militant casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 11.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the action “proportionate and deliberate.” He also said the strikes answered more than one attack, a “series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria.” No group, he said, “will strike our troops with impunity.” The Pentagon said the jets took off from a base in the CENTCOM region but did not say which.
Tit for tat
It did not stop there. Rockets aimed at Green Village in northeastern Syria came in at 8:05 a.m. on March 24. They landed about 5 kilometers off target and damaged a civilian house, injuring four civilians, two of them children. Later that day, at 10:39 p.m., rockets struck Mission Support Site Conoco and injured one U.S. service member, who was in stable condition. Less than an hour after that, three drones went for Green Village. Air defenses downed two. The third hit a building without causing significant damage. One more drone struck Green Village at 2:19 a.m. on March 25. Nobody was hurt.
Four attacks in about 18 hours, then, in answer to a single U.S. strike. Ryder rejected any reading of the exchange as a bid for a wider war. “We do not seek conflict with Iran,” he said, adding that the strikes were meant to send “a very clear message.” Biden, speaking in Ottawa, put it his own way: “be prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people.”
What the numbers say about the risk
About 900 U.S. forces are in Syria helping local groups fight ISIS. CENTCOM, formed in 1983, has long watched Iran’s reach. Most of these attacks do little harm: rockets, missiles and drones are usually shot down, miss, or cause only minor damage. Hasakah was the exception. Ryder acknowledged that there had been “a complete site picture in terms of radar,” yet the drone still got through to a maintenance facility at the base, and he declined to say how.
Sources
- U.S. and militias linked to Iran trade airstrikes in Syria, Pentagon says (NPR)
- US Air Strikes Hit Back at Iran's Proxy Forces in Syria After Deadly Drone Attack (Air & Space Forces Magazine)
