According to military officials from the United States, American troops stationed in the Middle East have been under attack for the past few weeks, even if the White House is trying to downplay the incidents.
Reuters wrote that “there has been an uptick in attacks on U.S. forces since the conflict in Israel broke out on Oct. 7 when Palestinian militants from Hamas attacked southern Israel. On Wednesday, a drone hit U.S. forces in Syria, resulting in minor injuries, while another one was brought down.”
BREAKING: The number of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria rose significantly over the weekend, from 30 to 38 in total, according to @PentagonPresSec
# of service members wounded also rose, to 46 in total, as troops continued to report injuries from the Oct 17-18 attacks
— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) November 6, 2023
Earlier this week, U.S. forces thwarted multiple drones targeting troops in Iraq, and Americans only survived because of pure luck.
When a drone laden with explosives was found late last month lodged in the upper floors of U.S. barracks in Iraq, Pentagon officials quickly realized how close the suspected militia-launched weapon came to killing American personnel, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In this case, the explosives failed to detonate, and there were no reports of injuries. But as the number of these attacks escalates, so too does the risk of a deadly incident that will demand a response from the U.S. military, edging it closer to direct confrontation with Iranian-backed groups it suspects are responsible.
“They are aiming to kill,” a U.S. defense official said. “We have just been lucky.”
The attack on U.S. troops at the al-Asad air base highlights the dilemma facing the Biden administration as it attempts to deter Iranian-backed militias while avoiding conflict with Iran or antagonizing the U.S.-allied government in Iraq, where many of the attacks were launched.
The attacks against Americans by Iran follow on the heels of it being revealed that the Islamic theocracy had multiple “spies” in the Pentagon. New Conservative Post reported, “In early 2014, playing into the Democratic obsession with the Iran Deal, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a program to promote a positive image of Tehran on global security issues, especially its nuclear program, by a network of influential overseas academics and researchers who could serve as their agents.”
One of those academics was Robert Malley, who became the president’s special envoy to Iran, but who was later charged with “mishandling” (read passing on information) classified documents and place further alleged spies within the Pentagon.
After an investigation, Tablet Magazine found that “The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. The emails, which were reported on by veteran Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, writing in Semafor, and by Iran International, the London-based émigré opposition outlet which is the most widely read independent news source inside Iran, were published last week after being extensively verified over a period of several months by the two outlets. They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.
On Thursday, Maier told a congressional committee that the Defense Department is “actively looking into whether all law and policy was properly followed in granting my chief of staff top secret special compartmented information.”
The emails, which were exchanged over a period of several years between Iranian regime diplomats and analysts, show that Tabatabai was part of a regime propaganda unit set up in 2014 by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.”
Despite the claims that Tabatabai has been acting on behalf of Iran, she has been allowed to keep her security clearance within the Department of Defense, which presumably includes the best way to penetrate our defenses and kill American troops abroad.
