Abu Dhabi, UAE (CNN) — The warfare between Israel and Hamas has already spilled over to the broader Middle East, with prospects of a confrontation between regional and world powers turning into ever extra seemingly.
Over the weekend, three US service members had been killed and greater than 30 had been injured in a drone assault on a small US outpost in Jordan, based on US officers. It was the primary time US troops had been killed by enemy hearth within the Middle East because the starting of the Gaza warfare. US President Joe Biden solid the blame on Iran-backed teams, promising retribution. An umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq stated it had attacked US positions alongside the Jordan-Syria border, however Iran denied any direct involvement within the strikes.
Across the area, the combating has largely been confined to tit-for-tat assaults between Iran-backed militias on one facet and the US, Israel and its allies on the opposite. But the direct intervention of each Iran and the US in current weeks, in addition to the demise of US troops, has heightened fears that the proxy battle between the 2 may flip right into a direct one.
US officers have repeatedly stated they don’t need to see the more and more excessive tensions throughout the Middle East broaden right into a regional warfare. So far, the US and Iran have prevented immediately confronting one another. The US has attacked Iranian-backed teams in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, whereas Iran-linked teams have focused American personnel in Iraq and Syria. Tehran has additionally struck what it stated had been anti-Iran teams in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Pakistan responded with retaliatory strikes.
The Islamic Republic, which has lengthy opposed the presence of US forces in what it considers to be its yard, has spent the previous few a long time constructing a community of Islamist, anti-Western and anti-Israel militias that it trains, funds and arms. Those teams have turn into extra belligerent of late, particularly Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who’ve disrupted a significant worldwide waterway, wreaking havoc on world commerce and prompting Western states to intervene. And it has constructed ties with and helped fund Hamas, which launched its warfare on Israel on October 7.
The US, having been attempting to pivot away from the Middle East for years, finds itself drawn again into the area. It already had a sizeable army footprint within the area earlier than the warfare, with over 30,000 troops.
Since the warfare started, nevertheless, Washington has considerably strengthened its army posture within the area, having moved roughly 1,200 US service members, alongside 1000’s of others aboard Navy service strike teams and a Marine Expeditionary Unit roughly 2,000 folks robust.
And in some locations, together with Iraq and Syria, the US army presence overlaps that of Iran and its allies.
As tensions throughout the area rise, right here is the place Iran or its allies are current, the place US forces are stationed and the place either side have performed army operations because the begin of the Israel-Hamas warfare:
Iraq
Tehran wields important affect on a number of Shiite militias intently tied to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These embody Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
Since the Israel-Hamas warfare began, a brand new group emerged calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI). That was the group that took duty for the assault on Tower 22 in Jordan. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a suppose tank, the IRI is an umbrella time period used to explain the operations of all Iran-backed militias in Iraq. Its goal is to permit varied Iraqi militias to assault US troops in Iraq and Syria below one umbrella time period whereas obscuring the precise perpetrator, based on WINEP.
Iran-backed teams have carried out dozens of assaults in opposition to US forces in Iraq because the Gaza warfare began, to which the US has retaliated with airstrikes. Over the weekend, US personnel had been injured in a ballistic missile assault on Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq. It gave the impression to be the second time ballistic missiles had been used to focus on US and coalition forces within the nation since October 7.
Until 2008, on the peak of the Iraq warfare, the US had as much as 160,000 troops within the nation. Today, some 2,500 forces are deployed at a number of bases, together with Erbil AB, Al-Asad AB, and the JOC-I (Union III) base in Baghdad.
Wary of his nation turning into a staging floor for a regional warfare, Iraq’s prime minister this month stated that Baghdad is searching for an exit from the US-led coalition. The US has burdened that its army is current within the nation on the invitation of the federal government.
Syria
Iran has a direct presence in Syria, the place its Quds Force, an elite unit of the IRGC that handles abroad operations, deployed after the 2011 rebellion to again the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Its personnel served as army advisers and fought on the frontlines for Assad, alongside Iranian-backed militias.
Syria additionally hosts the Zainabiyoun and Fatemiyoun Brigades, Shiite militias linked to the IRGC who’re believed to recruit Afghan and Pakistani fighters.
The US has 800 forces in Syria as a part of an ongoing mission to defeat ISIS. Most US forces are stationed in what army officers name “the Eastern Syria Security Area,” the place the US helps the anti-regime Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) within the nation’s northeast. There can be some US troop presence in Syria’s southeast, the place the US helps the Syrian Free Army, which additionally opposes the Syrian regime. The regime considers the US to be an invader.
US troops in Syria have more and more come below assault by Iran-backed teams in current weeks, to which the US has responded with airstrikes.
Jordan
The American troops had been killed at Tower 22, a US base in northeastern Jordan close to the border with Syria. US forces on the outpost are there as a part of an advise-and-assist mission with Jordan. US officers stated the drone was fired by Iran-backed militants and appeared to return from Syria.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq stated in an announcement on Telegram that it had attacked 4 bases alongside the Jordanian border, together with three in Syria.
Jordan hosts round 3,000 US troops. A longtime US ally and a serious recipient of US army support, Jordan’s airbases such because the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq, have been key to US intelligence, surveillance, goal acquisition, and reconnaissance missions in Syria and Iraq, the place Washington has been combating. ISIS.
Lebanon
Lebanon is dwelling to essentially the most highly effective paramilitary power within the Middle East: Iran-backed Hezbollah, one of many Islamic Republic’s best regional proxies.
The group has its primary base on the Israel-Lebanon border and has been exchanging hearth with Israel because the Gaza warfare started. The motion is near Hamas in Gaza.
While the precise measurement of the Shiite Islamist group’s arsenal is unknown, consultants have estimated that it has between 150,000 and 200,000 missiles, in addition to rockets and mortars. Hundreds of these missiles “are of excessive precision and extremely harmful,” based on the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah claims the group has 100,000 fighters, together with energetic troopers and reservists. Iran is believed to be Hezbollah’s primary arms provider.
Yemen
At the center of at the moment’s proxy battle between Iran and the US are Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who’ve been stepping up their strikes on ships within the Red Sea, saying they’re revenge in opposition to Israel for its warfare in Gaza.
The group is at the moment in command of northern Yemen, and was engaged in almost eight years of combating with a US-backed and Saudi-led coalition earlier than a halt in combating final 12 months.
Home-grown Houthi weapons had been largely assembled with Iranian parts smuggled into Yemen in items. But the group later made progressive modifications which have added as much as huge total enhancements, an official accustomed to US intelligence instructed CNN beforehand.
The US army stations warships within the Red Sea, off Yemen’s coast, from which it has been hanging Houthi targets. In December, the US assembled a coalition of greater than 20 nations to safeguard industrial site visitors in opposition to Houthi assaults within the Red Sea.
The Gaza Strip and Israel
Iran has constructed nearer ties with the group lately; not like all of Tehran’s different allies within the area, Hamas is a Sunni Muslim group, relatively than a Shiite one.
There isn’t any proof that Iran knew upfront in regards to the October 7 assaults and Iran just isn’t believed to have as a lot affect on Hamas as its different allies within the area. But the US believes that Iran has traditionally supplied as much as $100 million yearly in mixed help to Palestinian militant teams, together with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one other Gaza-based militant group.
On the opposite facet of the border, Israel is the biggest recipient of US army support, with Washington having contributed greater than $130 billion in help because the Jewish state’s founding in 1948.
Gulf Arab states and Turkey
While the Israel-Hamas warfare has not but spilled into the Gulf Arab states, a few of these nations really feel susceptible as they’ve been focused by Iran-linked teams earlier than. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been attacked by the Houthis in 2019 and 2022, respectively.
The US-allied Gulf states are additionally dwelling to a number of the largest deployments of US troops on the planet.
The US has round 13,500 US forces in Kuwait, the biggest American army presence within the area. Only Germany, Japan, and South Korea host extra US forces than Kuwait.
The US’ second-largest army presence within the area is in Qatar, which hosts round 10,000 US forces at Al-Udeid Air Base, the biggest US army base within the Middle East that can be dwelling to the US Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center. The US this month quietly reached an settlement that extends its army presence for an additional 10 years on the base.
Qatar maintains relations with Hamas, having hosted its political workplace within the capital Doha since 2012.
More than 2,700 US forces are stationed on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, whereas the UAE hosts 3,500 US army personnel at Al Dhafra Air Base, which is dwelling to the Gulf Air Warfare Center.
Other hubs for US army presence embody Bahrain, which hosts the US Naval Forces Central Command and is dwelling to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Turkey hosts 1,465 army members at Incirlik airbase.