OAN’s Daniel Baldwin
12:13 PM – Thursday, November 2, 2023
The Pentagon has confirmed that American service members stationed in both Syria and Iraq have faced at least 27 attacks by Iran-backed terror groups since October 17th.
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“To my knowledge [there were] no injuries, no damaged infrastructure,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said.
In response, the United States targeted two facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Officials say one was a weapons storage area and another a storage area for ammunition.
“It’s not sufficient at all,” Gabriel Noronha, former State Department advisor on Iran, told One America News. “This is just a little pin trick operation. It didn’t kill any of Iran’s terror fighters in the area. It just blew up a couple empty warehouses.”
Noronha says there is a way to deter Iran from endangering American forces in the Middle East without escalating the conflict into war with the country.
“We’ve already seen that Iran has launched, through its proxies, another about 10 attacks since the U.S. did those strikes,” Noronha said. “So clearly deterrence has failed here, and a much stronger response is needed. Again, no one wants war with Iran, and Iran doesn’t want war with the U.S. either. They want to be able to just carry out these kinds of attacks without repercussions, and that’s what they’re getting so far.”
The former State Department advisor on Iran in the Trump Administration pointed to how former President Donald Trump ended a cycle of escalation with Iran in 2020.
“When we killed Qasem Soleimani, it was in response to a cycle of violence just like this,” Noronha said. “Where the Iranians were taking pot shots at us. And ultimately the Iranians had to back down, because they know that they cannot confront a superpower like us and have any chance at winning. What we have to do is sort of punch them on the nose and that forces them to retreat.”
Noronha explains that Biden’s response has not directly confronted the problem head on, allowing Iran to continue to attack American troops without fear of true repercussions.
“We’ve only struck targets inside Syria whenever Iranian terror proxies attack us,” Noronha said. “And we’ve never attacked inside Iran. Doing so would send a message to Iran that we hold them responsible, not just their proxies out in the field.”
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