Fighting between the United States and Iranian-backed factions has escalated

ewemtow · 发表于 2021-7-20 05:48

U.S. President Joe Biden has ordered strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq. It's not the first such strike, and it probably won't be the last during his presidency.

But for some Democrats in Mr. Biden's party, the big question is whether this pattern of attacks and pushbacks amounts to an unspoken conflict.

If so, Democrats say, the United States could go to war directly with Iran without congressional involvement, a situation that has become politically highly sensitive after two decades of "endless war."

"Given the frequency of attacks on U.S. forces, it's hard to say this is not a war, and now our response has escalated," Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Reuters.

Murphy added: "What we have always feared is that the United States would go to war with the American people effectively unable to have their say."

Endless war
Democrats worry that the United States and Iran near war in 2020, at that time, the United States assassinated the Iranian revolutionary guard commander of the quds force of Iran in response, the U.S. military bases in Iraq missile attack, more than 100 U.S. soldiers were injured, after the U.S. and Iran's support for the armed wing of a series of attack each other.

In the latest round of mutual attacks, US warplanes attacked operational facilities and weapons depots across Syria and Iraq on Sunday in what the Pentagon said was a direct response to drone strikes by armed factions against US troops and facilities in Iraq.

A missile attack on US forces in Syria on Monday appeared to be in retaliation, but no one was hurt and the US military responded by targeting missile sites with artillery.

Atlantic Council resident Emma Ashford tweeted: "Many people think 'endless war' is just an emotional move, but that's an apt description of the kind of strikes we saw again (Sunday), with no strategic objective, no clear end point, only permanence and mutual attack."

demotion
The White House confirmed that Sunday's attack was aimed at curtailing escalations and deterring future attacks by armed factions against US forces.

Biden also said it was a legal act, referring to a provision in the U.S. Constitution that details the president's powers as commander-in-chief.

The US president added: "I have an Article 2 power that even people who don't want to admit in tall buildings admit."

Brian Finucan, a former official at the State Department's Office of Legal Counsel, says this administration, like its predecessors, does not see these events as an ongoing struggle.

"They describe it as sporadic hostilities," added Finucan, who now works for the International Crisis Group.

Compare this to the oil tanker wars with Iran in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan's administration treated "each round of fighting as an isolated event."

However, experts say that view fails to take into account the ongoing and escalating operations by Iranian-backed armed factions against the American military presence in Iraq.

Michael Nettles of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy warns that with the use of GPS guidance and precision targeting of intelligence, reconnaissance and missile defense assets of the US-led coalition, the use of drones by Iranian-backed armed factions appears to be becoming increasingly dangerous.

reassure
"Attacks by Iraqi factions on coalition positions in Iraq are increasing in quantity and quality," he said. Unless deterrence is restored, the likelihood of American deaths will increase."

Philip Smith of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy also explains that driving the US out of the region is the main goal of the factions, whose secondary goal is to show the US, the Iraqi government and other countries that they are using more advanced weapons, such as drones.

Lawmakers are currently working to revoke some of the war authorization powers that Republican and Democratic presidents have used to justify previous attacks in Iraq, Syria and other countries.

But that would not necessarily prevent Mr. Biden or any other president from launching defensive airstrikes.

After being briefed by Biden's national security team on the incident, Senator Murphy said he remains concerned because U.S. forces are in Iraq to fight ISIS and not Iranian-backed militias.

Murphy added that if Biden is worried about going to Congress for the authority to start a war, then perhaps he should reassure Americans of their skepticism about intervention in the Middle East.

"If Congress has difficulty authorizing military action against Iran-backed factions, largely because the people we represent do not want that to happen, that is the missing link in this discussion," said Murphy.

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