Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has now officially sounded the alarm regarding the consequences of the recently carried out missile attacks against U.S. bases in Syria.
Gallagher put out these statements this past Sunday as part of an interview on ABC’s “This Week” in which he stated that the U.S. must launch a strong policy of deterrence against Iran in the wake of these Iranian-backed militias exchanging fire with U.S. military outposts located in the region late last week.
“We should be concerned that our deterrent posture vis-a-vis Iran is crumbling,” stated Gallagher. “We can’t afford another failure of deterrence like that, which we saw in Ukraine.”
U.S. and Iranian-backed Militias went to blows late last week. Firstly, on Thursday, a drone strike was carried out by Iran against a maintenance facility for coalition forces near Hasakah in northeast Syria. A total of five service members ended up being wounded, and one U.S. contractor ended up being killed. That evening, the U.S. carried out retaliatory airstrikes against known militia outposts that were aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. These strikes resulted in the deaths of eight militants.
The following day, the militia groups opened fire once again. The groups shot off missiles at a U.S. military base located next to the Al-Omar oil field, but no injuries were reported in the wake of that attack. That evening, another 20 missiles were launched at a second U.S. base located in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, with at least eight missiles connecting with targets. This attack resulted in the injury of a single U.S. service member.
Militant attacks against U.S. forces have become fairly common throughout Syria. Since 2021, the Pentagon has published estimates that Iran-backed groups have taken part in over 78 attacks against U.S. troops throughout the country. The U.S. military currently has just over 900 troops and hundreds more contractors working in Syria alongside Kurdish fighters to battle back the Islamic State, which once maintained control over much of Syria and Iraq in 2014, is not allowed to return to power and rebuild itself, as reported by the New York Times.
Though the Islamic State has been shoved out of most of the territory, a few key pockets of terrorist resistance still maintain their hold and still carry out attacks against coalition forces.
