Shock and awe as America strikes Iran’s proxies

NIGHT AFTERBIRGC night, for almost a week, sources around the Middle East said the strikes were imminent. At around midnight on February 3rd they finally happened: -1 bombers flew from America and hit more than 85 targets at seven locations in western Iraq and eastern Syria. The sorties had been expected ever since a on January 28th, carried out by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, killed three American soldiers and injured dozens more at a remote outpost in north-eastern Jordan, near the border with Syria.The Pentagon said it had targeted both Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps () and its proxy militias. Over the past two decades Iran has built an “”—a network of armed forces and affiliates across the region that have become a huge menace. There are reports of casualties, although numbers remain fuzzy. Among the locations America bombed were al-Qaim, an Iraqi border town often used to smuggle weapons and drugs, and al-Bukamal, a Syrian city where Iranian-backed militias have a big presence. Both have been the target of previous American attacks.