Biden vows more US strikes in the Middle East while trying to avert wider war

The Biden administration vowed more strikes against Iran’s forces and its proxies in the Middle East after three straight days of punishing attacks, even as senior officials insisted the US won’t be pulled into a prolonged regional conflict.

“We will respond forcefully, and we will respond in a sustained way,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on CBS’s Face the Nation. Even so, he said, President Joe Biden doesn’t see the US action in the last three days as “some open-ended military campaign.”

Balancing between those two extremes will be Biden’s main challenge as he plots his next moves and braces for any counter-attacks by Iran and its proxies. Officials framed the US strikes – which hit 85 targets in Iraq and Syria on Friday, including some by long-range bombers flown from the US – as a necessary and inevitable response to the killing of three US soldiers in a drone strike in Jordan a week ago.

“Yes,” Biden said when asked Sunday in Las Vegas whether the US attacks are working.

The administration made clear it’s responding to other challenges too. US strikes on Saturday targeted Yemen-based Houthis who have roiled global trade by targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea, hitting the militants’ weapons-storage facilities deep underground and not solely targets that posed an imminent threat.

That more expansive target list – and the expectation that the Pentagon will launch more strikes against Iranian assets and the country’s proxies – suggested that the US was broadening the scope of its campaign. In an interview with CNN, Sullivan declined to rule out “any activity anywhere,” including in Iran itself.