The US destroyed or damaged 84 out of 85 targets in a sweeping series of airstrikes on Friday in Syria and Iraq, according to two US defense officials, with no current indications of Iranian casualties.
All but one of the 85 targets were “destroyed or functionally damaged,” the officials said, citing a preliminary battlefield damage assessment. A complete post-strike analysis is still under way, but one official says there are currently no indications that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed as part of the operations.
On Friday, in a briefing with reporters after the strikes, Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the targets were chosen “with an idea that there would likely be casualties associated with people inside those facilities.”
Remember: In response to a drone attack that killed three US service members and wounded scores more in Jordan last weekend, the US targeted facilities and weapons used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran-backed militias in both Iraq and Syria on Friday.
President Joe Biden’s administration has faced criticism that it waited too long to respond to the deadly drone strike in Jordan, which gave the Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria time to move their personnel. Sims said on Friday that good weather conditions for the operation did not present itself until Friday night.
Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes, far larger than previous US operations in Iraq or Syria, were only the start of the US response.
