Israel has struck an Iran-linked site south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing several people, two days after regional tensions rose again when three US troops were killed in a drone attack on a military outpost in Jordan.
The Israeli strikes, which also left an unspecified number injured, were not regarded as a direct response to the attack on the Tower 22 base on Jordan’s border with Iraq and Syria.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Monday that the US would take “all necessary actions” to defend its troops, although the White House national security council spokesperson said Washington was not seeking direct confrontation with Iran.
John Kirby said: “We are not looking for a war with Iran. We are not looking to escalate the conflict in the region.”
Iranian and Syrian official media said Monday’s attacks came from the Golan Heights and were attributed to Israel. The strikes hit the area of Aqraba, on the edge of the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, according to the Dama Post. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition Syrian war monitor, said the strikes hit a farm housing members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed factions. It said seven people were killed, including four Syrians, one of whom was the bodyguard of a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. It did not give the nationalities of the others.
Israel frequently mounts strikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps bases inside Syria, but the intensity of the attacks has been raised since the 7 October attack by Hamas.
The Iranian envoy to Damascus, Hossein Akbari, said none of the casualties were Iranian.
Earlier on Monday, the Iranian foreign ministry and intelligence sources issued a standard denial of involvement in the drone attack on US service personnel, which has been claimed by Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella term used since 2020 covering at least five Iran-backed Iraqi militant groups that prefer to avoid precise identification to minimise reprisals.
In his weekly Tehran press conference, the foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanani, called allegations of Iranian involvement “unfounded” and a “projection”.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not look favourably on the expansion of the conflict in the region,” Kanani said in a statement, adding that Tehran “is not involved in the decisions of the resistance groups”.
Tower 22 is located near al-Tanf garrison across in Syria and houses a small number of US troops. Tanf had been key in the fight against Islamic State and had assumed a role as part of a US strategy to contain Iran’s military buildup in eastern Syria.
A spokesperson for Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, said the attack in Jordan was “a message to the American administration. The continuation of American-Zionist aggression in Gaza risks provoking a regional explosion.”
Iranian foreign policy analysts remain perplexed that Biden is not responding to developments by putting pressure on Israel to seek what Tehran regards as a compromise.
Mehdi Mohammadi, a security adviser to Iran’s parliament, said: “If Biden does not understand that the cost he is paying in the region is a direct result of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza, and instead of putting pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, he chooses to put pressure on the resistance, on the eve of the election, he will be in the so-called scissors: both from the resistance and from Trump supporters in Tel Aviv. Is there common sense in Washington?”
A Downing Street spokesperson backed the US assessment that Sunday’s strikes were Iranian inspired. He said: “We believe that the attack was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq, in line with the US assessment.”
Asked if being sucked into a wider conflict was what the Houthis in Yemen wanted, he said: “We’re obviously very alive to the challenges in the region and the desire for some groups to encourage instability. But obviously it’s right that the UK does not bow to terrorists.”
US officials believe that troops at Tower 22 may not have attempted to shoot down the attacking drone because they confused it with an American drone returning to base at the same time, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
