Houthis Continue Attacks As Israel Hits Targets Deep In Syria

“I am on the Armed Services Committee, and we don’t know what we hit. We got no return summary of the bombing, and if anyone was hurt, anyone was killed, or anything was destroyed, and we spent a lot of money,” the Senator told our reporter Arash Alaei on Tuesday.

After a drone attack on January 28 on a US base in Jordan where three soldiers were killed, President Joe Biden pledged to retaliate, declaring that the attack was linked to Iran. However, the administration waited more than five full days before responding by air strikes on bases in Iraq and Syria, giving ample warning to Iranian IRGC and its proxies.

Critics have insisted that relentless attacks by Iran-backed forces against US targets in the region since mid-October warrants a more direct response against Iranian targets to re-establish deterrence. Reportedly, more ammunition was dropped than the number of armed individuals killed at the bombed locations.

Sen. Tuberville (R-AL) also expressed concern that the conflict in the Middle East is spreading because “others are getting involved” and not allowing the United States to calm the situation. He also expressed doubt that US retaliation against Iran-backed Houthi group, who attack vessels in the Red Sea, will have much of an impact

The commander of Iran's Navy, Shahram Irani, announced that other countries have also been invited to participate, although did not specify beyond China and Russia.

Irani emphasized that “the primary strategy of the Iranian Army Navy in the current situation is to safeguard the interests and economic resources of the Islamic system and its people,” referring to growing tensions in the Middle East sparked by Iran-backed militia Hamas's invasion of Israel on October 7.

In the wake of Israel's retaliatory attacks, Iran's proxies came out in allegiance, triggering a simmering regional conflict. US bases have been targeted over 160 times across the region as punishment for supporting Israel's right to defend itself.

Last year the three pariah states conducted a joint naval maneuver in the Gulf of Oman as they become a growing threat to the wider global landscape. 

This week, the think tank Policy Exchange revealed that the UK faces "a back-door threat from the growing Iranian, Russian and Chinese presence in the Republic of Ireland, a mounting challenge for a chronically deficient Irish security and intelligence apparatus".

The threat from the anti-Western trio, experts warned, requires the UK to expand its air and naval presence in Northern Ireland, to counter a growing threat.

Iraqi National Security Council chief Qassem al-Araji was with Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani in the discussions regarding the escalating tensions in the region.

"Iraq has deployed, and continues to deploy, important efforts towards preserving stability and establishing de-escalation, in the interests of all the people of the region," Sudani said, according to a statement from his office.

The meeting occurred against the backdrop of recent US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq targeting elite Iranian forces and pro-Tehran armed groups. The strikes were a response to a drone attack on January 28 that resulted in the deaths of three US soldiers at a base near the Syrian border in Jordan and over 160 attacks since the Gaza war broke out on October 7.

Iran's proxies have come out in allegiance with Iran-backed Hamas, which waged war on Israel in an invasion which was the most deadly single day for Jews since the Holocaust. The US has come under fire for its support of Israel's right to defend itself.

The US airstrikes in Iraq, close to the Syrian border, resulted in the deaths of 16 fighters from Hashed al-Shaabi, a coalition predominantly comprising pro-Iran paramilitary groups now integrated into Iraq's regular security forces.

Iran, a significant trade partner of Iraq, holds substantial political sway in Baghdad, with its Iraqi allies holding considerable influence in parliament and forming the current government.

After a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in November, Al-Sudani pledged to pursue the perpetrators of the rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq. The day after their meeting, the PM visited Tehran to meet President Ebrahim Raisi, Iraq in the middle of two allies amid wider regional conflict. 

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder confirmed in a press briefing Monday that two attacks had taken place in Syria and that there had been no casualties. He also suggested that the Pentagon expects Iran's proxy groups to continue their targeting of American forces in spite of the February 3rd US airstrikes.

In the meantime, Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday they fired naval missiles at two ships, Star Nasia and Morning Tide, in the Red Sea.

The group's military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech that they were US and British ships, but records from shipping trackers show they are flagged to the Marshall Islands and Barbados.

The US air campaign against targets in Syria and Iraq was authorized in response to the drone attack on January 28 that resulted in the deaths of three American soldiers and injuries to 40 others at a US base in Jordan. President Joe Biden and his team heavily publicized it both domestically, as evidence of their resolve, and internationally, as a deterrent against such attacks. As things stand, it is hard to say if the administration achieved these two goals.

At home, pressure is still mounting. Biden critics are by no means satisfied with his shot at ‘retaliation’. They accuse him of giving Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) enough time and clues to disperse and avoid a bloodied nose. And abroad, the message from Iran is clear: we had no presence or interest in the sites targeted –if we had, we would have hit back.

Ryder confirmed in his briefing that no Iranians were killed in the US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the early hours of Saturday local time. “CENTCOM is continuing to assess but initial indications are: we’re not aware of any Iranians killed,” he said.

What irked the critics was Maj. Gen. Ryder's remark that the administration doesn’t want a long-term campaign against Iran's military and associated proxy groups in Iraq and Syria. This apparently contradicts statements in the past ten days that the US is not done with those groups and will continue to target them.

“Our goal is not to… go full-scale war against Iranian proxy groups in Iraq and Syria,” Ryder said. “That’s not what we’re there for. We’re there to conduct the mission and support the defeat of [the Islamic State].”

Critics of the Biden administration say that such messaging is counterproductive as it signals “weakness”, which emboldens Iran and its proxies to be more adventurous, ultimately forcing the US to target IRGC or other regime assets directly, which, ironically, is what President Biden seems determined to avoid at all costs.

“I think you need a decisive strike, just like Trump did with Soleimani,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul told Fox News Monday. “They took Soleimani out and guess what, Iran backed down.”

Rep. McCaul also said that the retaliatory strikes last Friday were not satisfactory, contrary to what Ryder said in his briefing. “The targets may have been good,” McCaul said, “but the success was not.”

Officials from the Biden administration have repeatedly said that the airstrikes on IRGC-affiliated targets in Iraq and Syria were just the beginning, and that there’s more to come. But there seems to be a growing concern in Washington that even a string of attacks would fail to deter Iran –unless it hits “what matters to the Ayatollah.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial Tuesday drew a bleak picture, taking into account Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“President Biden’s retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria on the weekend were targeted to avoid hitting Iranians to avoid escalation,” the WSJ editorial reads,. “Imagine the restraints on the U.S. when Iran has nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them against U.S. allies or the U.S. homeland.”

In an interview with Fox News, Trump said, “When we took out Soleimani, you know Israel was supposed to do it with us. Two days before the take-out, they said, ‘We can’t do it. We can’t do it.’ I said ‘What?’ ‘We can’t do it,'” the Republican presidential frontrunner added.

Despite Israel's withdrawal, Trump claimed he proceeded with the operation in Iraq after consulting with a general who affirmed the possibility of executing it independently. He was killed in a drone strike near Baghdad Airport.

The former president, currently vying for a new presidential term, also highlighted his administration's efforts in deterring attacks by Iranian militias on US forces in a veiled reference to the more than 160 attacks since October 7 alone, under Joe Biden.

Qassem Soleimani was instrumental in arming and training various armed groups across the Middle East as the head of Iran's proxy forces.

Following Soleimani's death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had commended Trump for the strike that eliminated the influential Iranian general in January 2020.

At the time, he said, “Trump is worthy of full appreciation for acting with determination, strongly and swiftly ... We stand fully by the United States in its just battle for security, peace, and self-defense.”