By launching an airstrike against Iran-backed militia groups in Syria on Friday morning, Joe Biden became, by my count, the eighth president in a row to order a military strike in the Middle East or North Africa—a run dating back to Jimmy Carter’s ill-fated Iran hostage rescue attempt. He’s also the third in a row after Barack Obama and Donald Trump to come to office pledging to extricate the U.S. from costly Middle East conflicts and concentrate on other foreign policy priorities. He may find it similarly difficult to do so.
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The strike—the first ordered by Biden, anywhere in the world—killed one person and injured several others. Administration officials said it was a response to recent militia attacks in Iraq, in particular a Feb. 15 rocket attack on the airport in Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which killed a civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he was “confident” that the U.S. had hit back against the same Shiite militia—Kataib Hezbollah—that carried out the strike in Erbil, though the group has denied responsibility.