On Thursday, the White House condemned Iran for launching a barrage of missiles from Syria at Israeli military targets while expressing U.S. support for any retaliatory strikes by Israel, asserting the Jewish state’s “right to act in self-defense.”
“The Iranian regime’s deployment into Syria of offensive rocket and missile systems aimed at Israel is an unacceptable and highly dangerous development for the entire Middle East,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bears full responsibility for the consequences of its reckless actions, and we call on the IRGC and its militant proxies, including Hezbollah, to take no further provocative steps.”
According to Reuters, the White House’s remarks came after Israel accused Iran of launching 20 missiles from their military installations in Syria at Israeli military outposts in the Golan Heights. Israel’s response to the Iranian missile attack on Thursday was a swift destruction of dozens of Iranian targets in Syria by launching immediate airstrikes. The Israeli military said it was the most extensive Israeli strike in Syria since the civil war started in 2011.
The confrontation came two days after President Donald Trump declared that he is going to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, a decision that angered Tehran while making the Israeli leader happy, who, along with Trump, has condemned the deal.
A raft of crippling U.S. sanctions against Iran was lifted as part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. The deal allows the U.S. to waive these sanctions every 120 days as long as it believes Iran is adhering to the terms of the agreement.
The U.S. pulling out from the nuclear agreement sparked concerns in the Middle East and Europe of new confrontations between Iran and Israel. After the decision, Israel put its military on high alert, saying that it had detected “irregular activity” by Iranian forces in Syria.
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