US forces came under drone attack in Syria's al-Tanf military base. The Hill. The al-Tanf military base is positioned on the border with Iraq and Jordan and is used to train and deploy anti-ISIS fighters. Two drones, armed with explosives, attacked the base. One was destroyed by the base defenses while the other managed to hit the base but caused no damage or casualties. No group has taken credit for the attack, but many militants operate near al-Tanf, which lies on a major supply line for Iran and their associated militias. Iran likely provided the drones used in the attack.
My Comment:
This will be a short post largely because I wanted to point out that we still have troops in Syria. Syria has pretty much entirely disappeared from the headlines even though our troops come under attack there every so often.
One does wonder what the point of keeping the al-Tanf base is anymore. The base was started to fight ISIS but ISIS is largely irrelevant these days and the vas majority of their fighters have been destroyed or captured. Clearly it's not about ISIS anymore, even though I guess it is possible that the terror group could come back at some point. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
My guess is that the base has little to do with ISIS at this point and is there instead to counter Iran and their allies. The article pointed out that al-Tanf is on the supply lines for Iran's militia and those militias are being used to attack Israel. They probably use the base as reconnaissance point to pass on that information to Israel.
That probably explains why the base was attacked, though. The Iranian militants don't want to be spied on and that's why they launched the attack. Fortunately it failed pretty miserably. It is somewhat disturbing that one of the drones was able to get through the defenses, but in the end this was a pretty minor encounter.
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