A spokesman for the US presidency ruled yesterday Friday that the airstrikes launched by the US armed forces in Iraq and Syria against militants close to Iran, and presented as the beginning of a series of retaliations, were “successful”.

The spokesman for the National Security Council of the US presidency, John Kirby, said that the US aircraft participating in the operation, attacking 85 targets in seven different locations (three in Iraq, four in Syria) used “more than 125 precision munitions in about thirty minutes”. .

“We don’t want to see even one more attack against (US) positions or US military personnel in the region,” he added.

Since mid-October, there have been more than 165 attacks by drones, rockets and short-range ballistic missiles against US troops deployed as part of the anti-jihadist coalition mission in Iraq and Syria.

On Sunday, January 28, a drone strike that Washington attributed to militants close to Iran killed three members of the American armed forces at a support base in Jordan, on the border with Syria and about ten kilometers from Iraq. The US said it would retaliate.

The representative of the White House SEA assured that there was no connection between the moment chosen to launch the strikes – this depended, among other things, on the weather conditions – and the repatriation ceremony of the bodies of the three soldiers, in which the American was present president joe biden.

John Kirby also assured that the Iraqi government, which condemned the “violation of its national sovereignty”, had been notified in advance of the strikes.

The White House spokesman also said Washington had had “no communication,” not even informal or indirect, with Tehran after Sunday’s attack on a support base in northern Jordan that killed the three servicemen.

The US does not want “war” with Iran, Mr Kirby reiterated.