America's Talking - Biden Launches Strikes on Iranian-Linked Forces in Syria

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

The Pentagon released a statement late Thursday saying the U.S. military had struck two sites in Eastern Syria known to house Iranian-linked forces. Those strikes come after a series of attacks on U.S. troops in the region from forces linked to Iran. "Today, at President Biden's direction, U.S. military forces conducted self-defense strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups," the Pentagon said in a statement. "These precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17." Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Squares Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing fine. Thank you, Casey. We are recording this on Friday, October 27th. And Casey, less than 12 hours ago, the U.S.'s involvement in the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas escalated.

when President Biden ordered the military to strike a couple of sites in Syria that are known to house Iranian-linked forces. This is a pretty big escalation from the U.S.'s standpoint of what's going on over in the Mideast. Tell us about it. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right to say that this is something we really need to be watching closely. Is this going to escalate things? Every new step in that region now has the potential. to escalate into a regional conflict and even some kind of war where, you know, different powers get involved. And so basically what happened was there's two sites in eastern Syria that are linked to Iranian forces.

We, you know, we sent our jets over there, blew into pieces. And apparently, you know, what was, I think, a successful, successful strike. The Pentagon released information about it. Now, the U.S. said that this was a defensive, a self-defensive strike, basically, because actually, I think a lot of people don't know this, but our troops in the region had actually been attacked by some of these kind of terrorist groups and Iranian-linked forces. And nobody, only one person died. They actually died of, it was a civilian who died of a cardiac incident, a parent, some

form of heart attack or heart issue while they were sheltering in place. So no one died as a direct result of the fire, but someone did die while sheltering because of the stress of it. And then I believe the Pentagon said 21 people were injured, but I think there are minor injuries because they're back on duty now. And so, you know, it's not, this was not an unprovoked attack just in the name of supporting Israel. Of course, the U.S. does support Israel and does want to stand with them and they've been working

closely. And, you know, we've, there's very likely we're going to send money over there and we're going to talk about that, I think later in this episode. But I think it's just important to be clear that. I don't think this is significantly changing the U.S.'s position in the Israel-Hamas war. The Pentagon made that clear that they don't want this to lead to an escalation. They don't see this as a significant change in their strategy, but they said this is self-defense. You've been attacking our forces, and we're going to do something about it.

I think from the analysis I've seen on it, this is really the U.S. trying to deter Iranian involvement in the conflict, keep that involvement from escalating because Iran does have, you know, is significant military capacity. They've been working on getting nuclear weapons for a long time. Israel, of course, does have nuclear capacity. And so, and Iran is really the sworn enemy of Israel. It's the best day in the world would be if Iran, for Iran would be wiping Israel off the map. Now they are deterred in large part by us and knowing that we do not want some kind of regional Middle East war, basically what would be a religious war from Iran going after Israel. So I think the U.S. goal here, we can look at it from a couple of, you know, what is the U.S. see this, how does Iran see it,

and how does Israel see it? The U.S. doesn't want this to go any further beyond Israel and Hamas. Because we're already fighting Ukraine. Our munitions are low. This is expensive. We support Israel, but we really don't want to get other powers involved because especially if Iran gets involved, then there's going to be a lot of pressure on other Muslim nations, especially Turkey. to get involved. And these nations do have, you know, significant money and militaries, not to mention control over oil supply, global oil supply, right? And then if Turkey and Iran get involved, there's a real chance that Russia could say, hey, we hate the U.S. now anyway because of what's going on in Ukraine, we will at least pledge our support. And then if Russia gets

involved, Russia and China become rather cozy. And China's just looking for any excuse to, you know, form a kind of global alliance against the United States, which is one of their big goals, so they can take Taiwan. And so if the U.S. is fighting a Middle East war or Ukraine war, that's the perfect time for China to take Taiwan because we really would not be able to fight a war on three fronts, right? So I don't have thrown a lot information out there, but that is kind of the landscape. I think Israel just wants to take out Hamas. I think that they don't want a war with Iran, but they're also, they're always wary of that because Iran is constantly saying how they want to destroy Israel. So, you know, this could go two ways, saying this could be

just a blip and a larger conflict between Israel and Hamas. It doesn't really lead to anything. Or this could be something that escalates. I think only time we'll tell, we'll have to see in hindsight, how significant this event really was. Well, let's briefly turn to the funding part of this case. President Biden has requested more than $100 billion for a range of different issues, but included in that is more funding for Ukraine and their war with Russia and funding for Israel and their war with Hamas up until, you know, the last couple of days, because the U.S. House lacked a leader. They finally picked a speaker this week in Mike Johnson of Louisiana. That's going to, that funding request is going to go before Congress. But it faces

Is this a bit of an uphill battle? Is that what you reported? Yeah, I think it does. I mean, of course, the House of, the House Republicans have been very divided. They just got their act together a little bit in picking a speaker. But picking a speaker doesn't heal all the hurt feelings of the wounds, the frustration of the anger that it built up over the last few weeks. Republicans are already fighting again.

Matt Gates released a video, just attacking Jason Smith, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee. So, you know, there's still a lot of division. the party. And I think it's going to make it hard to get things done, especially because there's a growing contingent of Republicans who do not want to send any more money to Ukraine. Now, Republicans tend to support Israel more than Democrats do. Democrats tend to support Ukraine more than Republican students. So I think Biden's plan here is, hey, we're going to put this all together in one spending package, $61 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion roughly for Israel, and just have everyone vote on it. Now, Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, actually has said he wants to separate that money out,

which is really flies in the face of the Biden administration's plan. You know, Johnson has in the past been more skeptical of Ukraine funding and really much more skeptical than I think a lot of moderate Republicans would like. But he's recently said also that his ideas have evolved on this issue. So it's unclear if Johnson is going to stick to his skepticism on Ukraine funding or if he is going to kind of play ball with moderate Republicans on that issue as a way of extending an olive branch now that he's speaker. That's going to be something really to watch. But I think Biden will be able to get the Democrat votes, but there's so much dysfunction right now. He is fighting an uphill battle.

And then there's just random spending items in this bill. So I think it's very likely that something will pass. But Biden's wish list of $10, $506 billion here is probably not going to be the final form of whatever it does get through Congress. Thank you for that, Casey. We look forward to your ongoing coverage of this issue at thecentersquare.com, but we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McHalead. Please subscribe.

Thank you for listening.