Tag Archive for: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Here Are All The Times US Troops Have Shot Down Drones And Missiles Launched By Iran-Backed Groups Since October

  • U.S. forces in the Middle East have shot down at least 50 drones and 11 missiles since the Oct. 17 escalation in attacks by Iran-backed militias, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation tally.
  • U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have come under attack at least 106 times, a Department of Defense official told the DCNF.
  • Meanwhile, naval forces in the Red Sea have defended against 46 attack drones and saved commercial shipping vessels from ballistic missiles the Yemen-based Houthi rebel group fired.

U.S. troops in the Middle East have engaged more than 50 drones and at least 11 missiles, including ballistic missiles, fired by Iranian proxy groups, since the Oct. 17 escalation in attacks, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation tally.

The Iran-backed militias conducting drone and missile attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria and on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have framed their activities as a means of opposing Israel in its war on the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, and Washington’s alleged underwriting of the conflict that began Oct. 7. In the process of defending against those attacks, U.S. forces have downed dozens of drones and missiles targeting or nearing American personnel, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) statements, media reports and claims by the militia groups show.

The Pentagon says it aims to prevent a wider war from cascading across the Middle East and has moved to bolster air defenses at bases throughout the region.

A Department of Defense (DOD) official told the DCNF on Friday afternoon the Pentagon has counted at least 106 attacks on U.S. forces Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. CENTCOM has confirmed only six drones successfully intercepted during those attacks, but media reports suggest the number could be much higher.

The Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a coalition of various Iran-backed militant groups, through its semi-official Iraq War Media social media channel issued another claim on Friday accompanied by footage of rocket launches.

The first attack took place on Oct. 17, when the U.S. military and coalition forces fended off three explosive-laden drones bearing down on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq in two different incidents, CENTCOM said in a press release. The next day, two sites in Syria hosting American and partner troops came under attack; one of the drones was shot down before it could cause damage, while the other one caused minor injuries to personnel at the al-Tanf coalition garrison.

Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia, had threatened to attack U.S. military bases with missiles, special forces and drones if the U.S. intervened militarily in support of Israel, Reuters reported.

Rockets and drones pummeled the Ain al-Asad air base near Baghdad later on Oct. 19. On Oct. 23, U.S. troops shot down two more kamikaze drones in Syria with unspecified defensive systems, Pentagon officials confirmed. Rockets rained down at Iraq’s Ain al-Asad again on Oct. 24, Reuters reported, citing two Iraqi security sources.

The Pentagon warned Iran and its proxy militias in the Middle East intended to further escalate conflict by attacking U.S. troops based in the region.

Dozens of troops have sustained minor injures, and one American contractor died during a false alarm.

On Oct. 25, one attack was recorded at a location in northern Syria on Wednesday, The Washington Post reported, citing U.S. officials. Three rockets were aimed at the outpost and one landed inside, although no troops were injured.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of attacks, not all of which have been verified as successful. They continued through November and December.

Christmas day saw the most significant casualty of all the attacks when an explosive drone apparently crashed into Erbil Air Base in Iraq, wounding two American service members and leaving a third in critical condition, the Pentagon said. In retaliation, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes on “Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups focused specifically on UAV activities,” damaging facilities used to make drones and likely killing or wounding multiple militants.

It was the fourth round of airstrikes Biden ordered on facilities associated with the militant groups and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Tehran’s proxy operations, since Oct. 27.

Additionally, U.S. and coalition forces have defended bases as militants were planning or in the process of conducting strikes, recording casualties.

Separately, U.S. Naval forces in the Red Sea have downed at least 46 attack drones and 11 missiles the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched, according to a DCNF tally. The USS Carney guided-missile destroyer intercepted three land-attack cruise missiles and eight drones that appeared intended to strike Israel on Oct. 19, USNI News reported, citing a preliminary Pentagon after-action report.

Since then, CENTCOM has documented 23 attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, according to a statement. U.S. destroyers and fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier scrambled to respond.

In the latest incident, Houthi rebels on four small boats fired small arms and crew-served guns at U.S. helicopters while attempting to board a Maersk container ship early Sunday, the first time the Pentagon has confirmed Houthi militants directly targeted American military personnel. U.S. helicopters fired back, killing militants and sinking three of the skifs, the military said.

Saturday night, the Gravely shot down two more anti-ship ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis, according to CENTCOM.

The Pentagon is documenting attacks on international shipping on a case-by-case basis, the DOD official told the DCNF.

“Often times if multiple munitions are fired in quick succession, that would count as once ‘incident.’ However, it really depends on the timing and sequence of events during a period of time,” the official said.

U.S. warships downed drones twice in November and responded to an attempted strike on commercial ship with anti-ship ballistic missiles, CENTCOM has said. Incidents increased in frequency in December; on one occasion, the USS Carney shot down 14 attack drones that came at the destroyer in a wave, without any evidence of warship nearby.

Dec. 3 proved an especially tense day as the UUS Carney guided-missile destroyer responded to three separate distress calls as the commercial ships came under attack from an onslaught of drones and ballistic missiles from areas occupied by the Iran-backed militant group, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement. In the process of rendering support to the ships, the Carney downed three Houthi drones but CENTCOM said it was too early to determine whether a U.S. Navy vessel was also a target.

“These attacks represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security. They have jeopardized the lives of international crews representing multiple countries around the world. We also have every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran,” CENTCOM said in the statement.

U.S. naval assets downed a dozen suicide drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles and two land-based cruise missiles the Houthis fired toward the Red Sea over a 10-hour period on Dec. 26, the military said in a statement.

In a statement, the Houthi military spokesperson affirmed the group’s “continued support and support of the Palestinian people as part of their religious, moral and humanitarian duty” and reiterated intentions to attack any commercial vessel tied to Israeli owners or destined for Israel.

Shipping in the Red Sea has decreased dramatically to the Houthi threat, as successful strikes have sparked fires on board merchant vessels and tankers, while U.S. forces continue to take down missiles.

The Pentagon announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational task force aimed at safeguarding shipping through the critical waterway, on Dec. 18. Major freight companies say they still plan to reroute around Cape of Good Hope, CNN reported.

So far, the Pentagon has not confirmed whether the Houthis aimed for any drones heading directly for U.S. warships to impact on those ships, reportedly to avoid provoking further tensions as the region is simmering over the war between Israel and Gaza. The Biden administration has also refrained from directly targeting Houthi launch sites.

“President Biden’s perceived weakness by our enemies is leading to escalating attacks against our servicemembers and lawful commercial shipping. These attacks will continue until these terrorists understand that their actions will have severe consequences.” Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reporter, defense.

RELATED ARTICLES:

US-Led Coalition To Defend Shipping Against Houthi Attacks Doesn’t Hold Water, Experts Say

US Troops Kill Houthi Militants In Red Sea Firefight After Rebels Attempt To Board Commercial Ship

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

U.S. Conducts Second Round Of Retaliatory Airstrikes In Syria As Attacks On Troops Rises To 41

The U.S. conducted a second round of retaliatory airstrikes at facilities used by Iran’s elite military and Iran-backed groups in Syria on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

Attacks by Iranian-backed militias on bases in Iraq and Syria hosting U.S. troops numbered 41 on Wednesday after at least one more was confirmed, Fox News reported. The retaliatory strikes marked the second time the U.S. has targeted facilities linked to Iran and its proxy militias since the wave of attempted drone and rocket attacks beginning on Oct. 17.

“This precision self-defense strike is a response to a series of attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by IRGC-Quds Force affiliates,” Austin said in the statement. “The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests.”

President Joe Biden directed the attacks in eastern Syria on weapons storage facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated militias, the statement said. Two U.S. F-15 fighter jets conducted the airstrikes.

“The United States is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities. We urge against any escalation. U.S. personnel will continue to conduct counter-ISIS missions in Iraq and Syria,” he added.

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder on Monday characterized the operations as repeated “harassing attacks of drones and rockets.” At least 46 personnel sustained injuries including traumatic brain injuries and minor wounds from shrapnel, headaches, perforated ear drums and other conditions, he said.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reporter, defense.

RELATED POST ON X:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Iran Using Group Behind Attacks On US Troops In The Middle East To Increase Pressure On White House

Biden Regime Pushes for a Three-Day ‘Pause’ Proposed by Hamas

The Hamas Homes Israel Hits Are Military Targets

Muslim Girl At London Protest Calls For Killing All Jews

There is No Moderate Jihad

DSA-Linked Group Tries to Organize Protest Against Holocaust Museum Screening Hamas Atrocities

As Hamas Visits Its ‘Closest Friend’ Moscow, Questions Surround Russia’s Knowledge Of, Involvement In October 7 Hamas Attack: A Review Of Russia-Hamas Ties and Strategic Relationship

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Bolton warned before Rushdie attack that Iran wasn’t targeting only him, called on Biden to end negotiations

Bolton, who is quite spectacularly wrong about so very much, cannot be wrong all the time.

Bolton calls Iran assassination plot an ‘act of war,’ calls on Biden admin to ‘terminate’ nuclear talks

by Brooke Singman, Fox News, August 11, 2022:

EXCLUSIVE: Former White House national security adviser Amb. John Bolton said the assassination plot against him by an Iranian operative, and continued threats from Iran to American citizens on American soil is “unprecedented” and “an act of war,” telling Fox News the Biden administration has been “signaling weakness” to Tehran and should “terminate” negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal.

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced charges against Iranian operative Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for an alleged plot to assassinate Bolton, who served as former President Trump’s national security adviser until 2019.

U.S. officials said the plot was likely planned in retaliation for the January 2020 strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, a revered Iranian leader and the head of Iran’s Quds Force.

In an interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, Bolton said he had been “aware” of plots against him for “some time.”

Bolton said in the spring of 2020, the FBI contacted him with a “duty to warn.”

“I was given several duties to warn as time went on, and each one was becoming a little more serious,” Bolton said, noting that he went to a meeting at the FBI in the fall of 2021, where officials explained the latest information they had on plots against him.

Bolton told Fox News he requested U.S. Secret Service protection, which he had during the Trump administration but which was terminated upon his resignation.

The FBI granted the request for USSS protection in December 2021, and Bolton told Fox News that protection is ongoing.

But Bolton said he is not so concerned about the individual plot against him, but rather, threats from Iran against all Americans.

“It is not just me,” Bolton said. “The regime in Tehran has targeted a lot of Americans.”

“The aim here is to kill Americans on American soil, and its former government officials,” Bolton explained. “This is a broad threat to private American citizens on American soil, and I think it is, essentially, unprecedented.”

He added: “You could call it an act of war, and it tells you everything you need to know about the government in Tehran.”…

“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, through the Defendant, tried to hatch a brazen plot: assassinate a former U.S. official on U.S. soil in retaliation for U.S. actions,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia said this week.

Meanwhile, Bolton went on to slam the Biden administration for engaging in negotiations with Tehran to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, known as the Iran nuclear deal.

“To me, more important than the threats to the individuals is that catastrophic strategic policy that the administration is pursuing to try and revive the 2015 nuclear deal,” Bolton said. “You’ve got a government that absolutely won’t honor any commitments it makes—it will do whatever it thinks is necessary to get nuclear weapons.”

He added: “People are deluding themselves if they think that if we give Iran enough concessions, that they gain to let us back into the nuclear deal—they’ll do what they want to do.”…

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Iran tried to assassinate U.S. official, former Trump advisor

Islamists Violently Targeted These Turkish Authors Because of Salman Rushdie’s Work

After Rushdie stabbing, Muslim tells J.K. Rowling ‘Don’t worry you are next’

Rushdie attacker had ‘strong indicators of support for Iranian regime,’ cops won’t say if he was motivated by fatwa

Why Aren’t Our Generals Learning?

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Iran Issues Ramadan Attack Warning in Threat to Mideast Peace

In an ominous warning to Israel and regional Sunni countries, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on Wednesday threatened those nations that have “established political and security relations with the Zionist regime,” a reference to the Jewish State of Israel.

He added, “We explicitly declare and warn that the continuation of such relations is not acceptable at all.”

Coming three days before the start of Ramadan, the annual month of obligatory fasting and prayer for Muslims and one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the warning should be taken seriously by those specifically identified in Salami’s threat because Ramadan is also traditionally a time of Islamic terror attacks.

Those attacks may already have begun with a deadly spate of terrorism across Israel, in Be’ersheba, Hadera and Bnei Brak (just outside of Tel Aviv) that thus far have killed 11 people in the space of a single week. Assailants, two Arab-Israelis and the last one from the town of Ya’bad, near Jenin in Samaria, were armed with knives and guns, including an M-16 rifle, in the three attacks.

In HAMAS-ruled Gaza, sweets were handed out on the street to celebrate Israeli deaths, and in Lebanon, Hezbollah hailed the attacks with flags and music in the streets.

An official statement from Hezbollah referenced both the Abraham Accords indirectly and more specifically the tri-partite March 22 meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the Egyptian resort of Sharm e-Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, declaring that “All meetings of betrayal and the heights of normalization cannot give the enemy security.”

The fact that it was Maj. Gen. Salami, the IRGC commander, who issued the Iranian threat is significant, because it is the IRGC and its subordinate Qods Force unit that provide the support — arms, funding, training — for Islamic terror proxies across the Middle East.

The official statements coming from both Iran and HAMAS, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the wake of the Israel attacks indicate an orchestrated terror offensive, timed for the start of Ramadan. As Islamic doctrine obligates that a warning be given before attack, the Tehran regime is here putting Israel and the entire region on notice that this Ramadan, as others past, will be a violent one.

The Iranian regime understands that both within and outside of the Abraham Accords, key regional players, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and others are banding together with Israel in an unprecedented recognition of the threat from an aggressive and rapidly nuclearizing Iran.

Those expanding relationships with the hated Jews, as well as the centuries-old Sunni-Shi’ite split that leaves the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in administrative charge of Islam’s Two Holy Places — Mecca and Medina — are what’s really “not acceptable at all” to the Shi’ite Twelvers who head both Iran and the IRGC/Qods Force.

It is especially incongruous that at precisely this time, in this atmosphere, the U.S. reportedly is considering removing the IRGC from the Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list as one of a slew of concessions to Iran intended to revive the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.

Indeed, indicative of the alarm such reports are invoking, recent articles in the Saudi press have labeled such efforts an “absurd” act and a “crime” that will threaten global security. Writing in the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on March 22, Saudi journalist Abdullah bin Bijad al-Otaibi called the idea of revoking the IRGC’s terrorist designation “a direct threat and danger not only to the Arab states but to the entire world.”

Likewise writing in Al-Sharq Al Awsat, Saudi journalist Tariq al-Homayed drew the broader implications, stating that “Removing the IRGC from the terror list will grant Iran freedom of action in the region as part of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance.”

As the seasons of Ramadan, Passover and the Christian Holy Week culminating with Easter on April 16 all coincide this year, it is urgent that we understand the explicit intent of the Iranian warning to Israel and the region. It is nothing less than a declaration of war against Israel and those regional people who are choosing the pathway of peace and reconciliation with it.

©Clare Lopez. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Death toll during the holy month of Ramadan 2022