By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
President Biden and his top advisors worry that it’s just a matter of time before an American soldier is killed in Iraq or Syria amid a flurry of rocket attacks launched by Shia militias on US bases that started in response to US support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
US officials suggested that if an American is killed, President Biden might attack Iran directly, which could provoke a major war. Iran is allied with the Shia militias that have been taking credit for attacks on US troops, but Tehran has denied it’s involved in the operations.
In October, the Pentagon said it had no direct evidence Iran was ordering attacks on US troops, and a US official told CNN that how willing the Shia militias were to act independently was always a “persistent intelligence gap.” Regardless, the US is still blaming Iran for the attacks.
The report said US officials have been debating how to respond to the attacks and don’t want to “go so far that the conflict would escalate into a full-fledged war, particularly by striking Iran directly.”
However, if an American is killed, the US officials say they may have no choice but to attack Iran. “That is a red line that has not been crossed, but if the Iranian-backed militias ever have a day of better aim or better luck, it easily could be,” the report reads.
It’s unclear from the report if the US would bomb Iran directly or target the Iranian military in Iraq or Syria. Israel recently killed five members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by targeting them with airstrikes in Damascus, risking a response from Tehran.
So far, there have been over 140 attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria since mid-October, and around 70 have been injured. The US has launched several airstrikes in response, prompting calls from the Iraqi government for the US and other foreign forces to withdraw from the country. But President Biden is choosing to stay, putting the troops in harm’s way and risking a major war.
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Dave DeCamp
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.