The US government announced yesterday that it had carried out what it said were “successful” retaliatory strikes against elite Iranian armed forces and armed groups close to Iran in areas of Iraq and Syria, with the US president warning that they would “continue”.

The Democratic president earlier yesterday attended a military base in the northeastern United States for the repatriation of the bodies of three members of the American armed forces who were killed Sunday in Jordan in a drone attack that Washington attributed to militants close to Iran.

Two hours after the doors of the hearse closed with the coffins, draped in the US flag, the US armed forces swung into action.

The operation, which lasted “about thirty minutes”, was “successful”, the White House said, reassuring that it does not want “war” with Iran.

The operation involved several aircraft, including B-1 Lancer long-range bombers, the US Pentagon said.

A total of 85 targets were hit in seven different locations — three in Iraq and four in Syria — said John Kirby, a spokesman for the US presidency’s National Security Council.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 18 fighters from factions close to Iran were killed in eastern Syria.

Agence France-Presse sources in the Iraqi security forces confirmed that positions of pro-Iranian armed groups in western Iraq, on the border with Syria, were bombed.

“Violation of national sovereignty”

The US presidency assured that the Iraqi government, which condemned the “violation of its national sovereignty”, had been notified in advance of the strikes.

The US strikes raise the risk of having “disastrous consequences for the security and stability of Iraq and the region”, said a military spokesman for Prime Minister Mohamed Zia al-Sudani.

The U.S. operation targeted including command and intelligence centers, drone and missile depots belonging to paramilitary and Iranian forces and “facilitating attacks against U.S. forces and the (international counter-jihadist) coalition,” according to the Pentagon.

“We don’t want to see one more attack against (US) positions or US military personnel in the region,” White House spokesman Kirby said.

“Our payback began today. It will continue at a time and places of our choosing,” US President Joe Biden warned.

Since mid-October, there have been more than 165 attacks, using drones, rockets and short-range ballistic missiles, against US troops deployed as part of the anti-jihadist coalition mission in Iraq and Syria. But no US servicemen had been killed until Sunday’s attack in Jordan.

Repatriation

“The US does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who seek to harm us know this: if you harm an American, we will retaliate,” US President Biden emphasized, according to the press release released by his services.

The American government had already declared that the retaliations would be multiple and would have a duration of time.

Joe Biden, who is campaigning for re-election to the presidency, was under enormous pressure to retaliate after the deaths of the three soldiers in Jordan.

The bodies of William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Layton Sanders and Briona Alexandria Moffett, from the US state of Georgia, were found one by one yesterday by a commanding US transport aircraft at Dover Air Force Base (North East).

Mr. Kerby, however, assured that there was no connection between the moment chosen to launch the strikes – weather conditions played a role, among other things – and the repatriation ceremony of the bodies of the three soldiers, in which US President Joe Biden was present .

The president, 81, standing at attention in the cold, hand on heart and gaze fixed ahead, was flanked by his wife Jill Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Brown and others.

Family members of the three soldiers, to whom press access had been blocked, were also present.

The ceremony, choreographed to the last millimeter, lasted about ten minutes. The absolute silence was broken only by military orders.

Joe and Jill Biden had also attended, at the same military base, the repatriation of the bodies of US servicemen who had lost their lives in a kamikaze attack at Kabul International Airport on August 26, 2021, amid the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.