President Biden said on Friday the US would respond strongly to protect its personnel after US forces retaliated with airstrikes on sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after an attack Thursday by a suspected Iranian crafted drone that killed a US contractor and injured six other Americans in northeastern Syria. The United States is not seeking conflict with Iran, Biden said in Ottawa, where he is on a state visit. But he said Iran and its proxies must be prepared for the US to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night. Activists said the US bombings killed at least four people.

While this is not the first time the US and Iran have traded strikes in Syria, the attack and US response threaten to overturn recent efforts to de-escalate tensions in the wider Middle East, where rivals powers have recently taken steps towards relaxation after years of turmoil.

Two simultaneous attacks were carried out against US troops in Syria on Friday, according to US officials. Officials said that based on preliminary information, there was a missile strike against a Conoco gas plant that houses a base of US troops, and that one US serviceman was injured and is in stable condition. Around the same time, several drones were launched on Green Village, where US troops are also stationed. An official said all but one of the drones had been shot down and there were no U.S. injuries. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

On Friday night, two Syrian opposition activist groups reported a new wave of airstrikes on eastern Syria that hit positions of Iranian-backed militias.

after missiles were fired at a Conoco gas plant that has a base housing US troops

.

Several US officials said the US had not launched any attacks as of late Friday.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement that the US intelligence community determined the drone

in Thursday’s attack

was of Iranian descent, but offered no other immediate evidence to support the claim. The drone hit a coalition base in the northeastern Syrian city

Hasaka h

. The injured included five US military personnel and a US contractor.

Austin said the attacks were in response to the drone strike and a series of recent attacks on coalition forces in Syria by groups linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

During a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Biden expressed his deepest condolences to the family of the slain American and wished the injured well.

Iran relies on a proxy force network across the Middle East to counter the US and Israel, its regional nemesis. The US has had troops in northeastern Syria since 2015, when they were deployed as part of the fight against the Islamic State, and has some 900 troops there, working alongside Kurdish-led forces who control about a third of Syria.

The US airstrikes hit targets in three cities in eastern Syria, activists said. Overnight videos on social media claimed to show explosions in Syria

Dar Alzour,

a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields. Iranian-backed militias and Syrian forces control the area, which has also seen suspected airstrikes by Israel in recent months, reportedly targeting Iranian supply routes.

According to a defense official, the US counterattacks were carried out by F-15 fighter jets flying out of the country

Al Udeid Air Force Base

in Qatar. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

According to a US official, the US F-15s hit three locations, all in the vicinity of

Dar Alzour.

The action group Deir Ezzor 24, which made the news

Dar Alzour

province, said the US strikes killed four people and injured several others, including Iraqis.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war watcher based in the UK, estimated the death toll from US attacks on 11 Iranian-backed fighters, including six at a weapons depot in Harabesh district in

Dar Alzour

and five others at military posts near the towns of

Mayas

other

Bukamal

.

Rami Abdurrahman

who heads the observatory said three rockets were fired into the Omar oil field in

Dar Alzour,

which houses US troops, in apparent retaliation for the US attacks.

An official from an Iranian-backed group in Iraq said seven Iranians were killed in attacks on eastern Syria early Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.

Deir Ezzor 24 and the observatory had no details on whether Friday night’s new spate of airstrikes on the town of Dair Alzour caused any casualties.

The Associated Press could not immediately independently confirm the activists’ reports. Iran and Syria did not immediately acknowledge the strikes, nor did their officials at the United Nations in New York respond to requests for comment from the AP.

Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is suspected of carrying out bomb-carrying drone strikes across the Middle East.

The exchange of strikes came as Saudi Arabia and Iran worked to reopen embassies in each other’s capitals. The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen its embassy in Syria, whose president, Bashar Assad, is backed by Iran in his country’s long civil war.

U.S. Army General Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of the U.S. military Central Command, warned that U.S. forces could launch additional strikes if necessary. We are positioned for scalable options in light of any additional Iranian attacks, Kurilla said in a statement.

Addressing the US House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Kurilla warned lawmakers that today’s Iran is exponentially more militarily capable than it was even five years ago. He pointed to Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and bomb-carrying drones.

What Iran is doing to hide its hand is they are using Iranian proxies, Kurilla said.

Since January 2021, Iran has carried out 80 attacks against US troops and sites in Iraq and Syria, according to officials. The vast majority of them were in Syria.

Diplomacy to de-escalate the crisis seemed to begin immediately. Qatar’s foreign minister spoke by phone with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Iran’s foreign minister

Hossein Amirabdollahian

, reports the Qatari state news agency. Qatar was recently a talking point between Iran and the US amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Austin said he authorized the retaliatory attacks at Biden’s direction.

As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary steps to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing, Austin said. No group will attack our troops with impunity.

The US under Biden has previously hit Syria over tensions with Iran. The president ordered strikes against Syria in February and June 2021 and in August 2022.

Dareen Khalifa

a senior Syria analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said that while Thursday’s strike exchange came at a sensitive political moment due to the overall deterioration in US-Iran relations and the deadlock in nuclear talks, they no significant escalation.

These attacks have been going on for quite some time, Khalifa said, though she noted that there are usually no casualties.

While the risk of an escalating cycle is present, she said, I think the Biden administration is now not eager to escalate in Syria and will instead have a relatively measured response.

Since the US drone strike in which Revolutionary Guards Maj. Gene.

Qasem Suleimani

in 2020, Iran has tried to make life difficult for US troops stationed east of the Euphrates, said

Hamidreza Azizi

an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Iran increased its support for local proxies

[Dair Alzour]

as he tried to ally with the area’s tribes, Azizi wrote in a recent analysis. Because of the geographical proximity, Iraqi groups also intensified their activities in the border zone with Syria and in the

[Dair Alzour]

province.

The strikes come during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The war in Syria began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests that rocked the Middle East and led governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. It evolved into a regional proxy conflict in which Russia and Iran have supported Assad. The United Nations estimates that more than 300,000 civilians died in the war. Those numbers exclude soldiers and insurgents killed in the conflict; their number is estimated at tens of thousands.