U.S. launches strikes in Iraq, Syria, nearly 40 reported killed

The United States launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and militias it backs, reportedly killing nearly 40 people, in retaliation for a deadly attack on U.S. troops.

The strikes, which included the use of long-range B-1 bombers flown from the United States, were the first in response to the attack last weekend in Jordan by Iran-backed militants, and more U.S. military operations are expected in the coming days.

The strikes intensified a conflict that has spread into the region since war erupted between Israel and Hamas after the militant Palestinian group's deadly assault on Israel on Oct.7.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a statement the attacks represented "another adventurous and strategic mistake by the United States that will result only in increased tension and instability".

Iraq

summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires in Baghdad to deliver a formal protest. Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, a state security force including Iran-backed groups, said 16 of its members were killed including fighters and medics. The government earlier said civilians were among 16 dead.

In Syria, the strikes killed 23 people who had been guarding the targeted locations, said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on war in Syria.

U.S. Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, said the attacks appeared to be successful, triggering large secondary explosions as the bombs hit militant weaponry. He said the strikes were undertaken knowing that there would likely be casualties among those in the facilities.

Despite the strikes, the Pentagon has said it does not want war with Iran and does not believe Tehran wants war either, even as Republican pressure has increased on U.S. President Joe Biden to deal a blow directly.

Iran, which backs Hamas, has sought to stay out of the regional conflict itself even as it backs groups that have entered the fray from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria - the so-called "Axis of Resistance" that is hostile to Israel and U.S. interests.

'WE DO NOT SEEK CONFLICT'

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after the strikes that Biden had directed additional action against the IRGC and those linked to it. "This is the start of our response," Austin said.

"We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else, but the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces," Austin said.

An Iraqi government statement said the areas bombed by U.S. aircraft included places where Iraqi security forces are stationed near civilian locations. It said 23 people had been wounded in addition to the 16 killed.

The White House said the United States had informed Iraq ahead of strikes. Baghdad later accused the United States of deception, saying a U.S. claim of coordination with the Iraqi authorities was "unfounded".

On Friday, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said his country will not start a war, but it will "respond strongly" to anyone who bullies it. He did not mention the U.S. strikes in a speech on Saturday marking Iran's space technology day.

Iran's ambassador in Damascus Hossein Akbari, in comments reported by the semi-official Fars news agency, played down the airstrikes, denying Iran-linked targets were hit and saying the aim was "to destroy Syria's civil infrastructure".

Hamas said Washington was pouring "oil on the fire".

Britain called the United States its "steadfast" ally and said it supports Washington's right to respond to attacks.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, arriving for an EU meeting in Brussels, said the U.S. strikes were the result of Iranian proxies "playing with fire".

MORE THAN 160 ATTACKS ON U.S. TROOPS

The strikes hit targets including command and control centers, rockets, missiles and drone storage facilities, as well as logistics and munition supply chain facilities, the U.S. military said.

In Iraq, residents said several strikes hit the Sikak Neighborhood in Al-Qaim, a residential area that locals said was also used by armed groups to store large amounts of weapons. Militants had left the area and gone into hiding in the days since the Jordan attack, local sources said.

Khaled Walid, a Sikak resident, said that the U.S. strikes and secondary explosions of munitions stored in the neighborhood had caused widespread damage.

U.S. troops have been attacked over 160 times in Iraq, Syria and Jordan since Oct. 7, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones, prompting the United States to mount several retaliatory attacks even before the latest strikes.

The United States has assessed that the drone that killed the three soldiers and wounded more than 40 other people in Jordan was made by Iran, U.S. officials have told Reuters.

"Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing," Biden said.

The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, criticized Biden for failing to impose a high enough cost on Iran, and taking too long to respond.

Iranian advisers assist armed groups in both Iraq, where the United States has around 2,500 troops, and Syria, where it has 900

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wrapup-1-u-launches-retaliatory-114015325.html

Will The Fed Elect Biden?

 by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The Federal Reserve guards its independence with indefatigable ferocity.

It is so intent on keeping it that it will practically do anything for the politicians that might otherwise take it away.

It’s been like this for one hundred years and more.

The irony should be obvious.

If you have to acquiesce to your masters to retain your decision-making autonomy, you do not really have it at all. And the Fed never has had it. It has actually two masters: the largest and most powerful banks and the largest and most powerful forces within government. Most of the time these days, those are the same people.

The Fed is there to serve them while imposing costs on the rest of us.

Everyone associated with the Biden administration has been propagandizing for months and years about the glorious results of Bidenomics. All corporate media echos this gibberish even though most people know it is completely untrue. The data is fake. When it is not fake it is not relevant. When it is relevant, the underlying reality is terrible.

You can see it in the savings rates alone. It is going down, now at 3.7 percent (historical rates have been closer to 10 percent). This is true even though for the first time in more than a generation there is finally a positive return on savings!

Without savings, you don’t get sustainable investment. Without that, prosperity dies a gradual death.

How could personal savings be going down? The answer is unbearably obvious. People do not have discretionary income to save. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, despite record numbers of multiple jobholders. The most reliable data we have reports real income as down.

What buoyancy there is in American economic life is due to growing debt and government spending which means more debt. It simply cannot last. It’s a ticking time bomb. The substance of a genuinely prosperous society is being eaten out before our very eyes. You know this in your heart.

In the last four years, the Fed has stolen 20 cents on the dollar of your purchasing power. They sent you money in the mail and then took it away with the hidden tax called inflation. Then they raised rates to curb the inflation just when American households had run out of money to save.

Who ended up with the trillions in newly printed dollars? The banks. Great reset businesses like wind turbine companies. Online learning platforms. New billionaires were minted at your expense and you are left holding pockets of change. Now the IRS wants those.

But here’s the thing.

The Fed has said it is prepared to lower rates this year. Not now but later. Perhaps closer to the election so the credit-addicted financial markets can get another injection of narcotic to make it float as high as possible. The idea here is to create the illusion of prosperity in service to the deep state that absolutely prefers that Donald Trump not get a second term.

The idea of rate-cutting, in theory, is to dig the economy out of recession or prevent one. It does not work for the long term but that’s the theory. This is what’s called countercyclical policy. It’s a discredited disaster but the Fed does it anyway.

As a rule, a long history of failure does nothing to dissuade the Fed from repeating the same.

But if the economy is all peachy keen and everything is just hunky dory, why would the Fed need to be talking about cutting rates? What possible purpose could it solve?

You can observe the mainstream financial press warming the public up now for this eventuality. They are answering the obvious question the following way. The Fed is just being cautious and deploying earned slack in their interest rate management in service of the American people.

I’m sure you believe this!

There is absolutely no basis whatsoever for cutting rates now. They have barely been positive in real terms for a few months of the last quarter century. The policy of zero interest gave rise to bloated companies, absurd financialization, DEI, ESG, and an entire overclass of wildly high-paid credentialed elites who do nothing but the devil’s work.

So good riddance. But rates are now barely positive according to all official inflation and rate data. Indeed they need to be vastly higher if they are going to be anything approaching free-market reality.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

Right now we have an economy running on fakery. The Fed’s plan to cut more later this year is a political strategy and nothing more. It will do long-term damage. It will further the credit/debt addiction and it will install a regime that is currently working to convert the United States into a prize for the great reset, ruled by the World Health Organization and throwing aside its pro-freedom patrimony for a ghastly and malicious hellscape.

Meanwhile, the path could reignite inflation, just as it did after 1976. But, heck, the Biden junta will be running things and the goal will have been achieved.

I’m not being partisan here. I’m only suggesting that having a giant money-printer down the street from the White House might not be the best path for guaranteeing democratic fairness or sound money. The mix of politics and monetary policy is utterly toxic. And if this year proceeds like it appears to be mapped, we are about to find out just how nefarious this mix is.

And, hey, if this Fed caper doesn’t work, they always have Taylor Swift and her Pfizer-salesman boyfriend.

They have laid very clever plans but what the Fed and the White House cannot control is the massive loss of trust among the public, and they cannot quell the growing public anger about immigration disasters and declining American prosperity and freedom. The illusion works until it suddenly does not work anymore.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-fed-elect-biden