President Joe Biden has defended the US response to a recent drone strike that left three American soldiers dead, claiming that the air raids have targeted militia groups in Iraq and Syria allegedly backed by Iran.
In a statement issued on Friday, Biden said he personally ordered the Pentagon’s response to last weekend’s deadly drone strike on a Jordanian military base housing US troops.
“This afternoon, at my direction, US military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack US forces,” the president said, referring to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military unit.
“Our response began today,” Biden stated, adding that retaliatory strikes would continue “at times and places of our choosing.”
US defense chief Lloyd Austin also warned that the latest round of strikes is just “the start of our response,” adding that “the president has directed additional actions.”
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US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, previously announced that it had carried out air raids on more than 85 targets across both Iraq and Syria, also citing last Sunday’s drone strike in Jordan. The operation involved “numerous aircraft,” including long-range bombers flown from the US, which dropped over 125 precision munitions on their targets, the command added. Those targets were said to include command and control centers, intelligence sites, weapons caches, and supply-chain facilities of Iranian-backed militias.