What the U.S. hopes to achieve with airstrikes against Iran-backed militias

John Yang:

Good evening. I'm John Yang. As we come on the air tonight the United States is carrying out a second wave of airstrikes against dozens of Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen. The two-day assault is in response to last weekend's drone strike in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops and injured dozens more.

Last night's air assault struck sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iran backed militias. Pentagon officials said it took just 30 minutes Friday night for B1 bombers and other U.S. aircraft to hit more than 85 targets. Iraq and serious of the attacks killed at least 34 people, both members of Iranian-backed militant groups and civilians.

Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army Colonel. He was the top spokesman at Central Command. Joe, talk about how you design an event like this A retaliatory strike like this. On the one hand, you want to do something strong enough to get their attention. But on the other hand, you don't want to do anything too strong.

Col. Joe Pacino (Ret.), U.S. Army: So John, there's basically a range of options from low level of violence to high level of violence, you know, the high level you're talking about strikes inside of Iran, low level you're talking about the kind of little precision strikes we've done we've been doing since November.

This is about what we've done, you know, just tonight, and then last night is in the low to medium range. Okay, so you present these options to the White House. The Pentagon makes a recommendation, ultimately the National Security Council in the White House renders a decision.

John Yang:

What is the response from Iran and from these militant groups? What does it tell you?

Joe Pacino:

I'm cautiously optimistic right now. Iran has denounced the strikes. But they haven't said anything about a retaliation. And there's signals here that Iran wants to pull back on some of these Shia proxy groups that maybe they've gotten a little bit out of control or out of the control of Esmail Qaani, he is the senior commander of the Quds Force in Iran and Tehran. And so maybe he wants to pull them back. So I'm optimistic about that.

John Yang:

Does he have that control? When is he able to pull them back?

Joe Pacino:

What we're hearing is that, you know, you think about Qasem Soleimani. You know, this powerful figure shadowy figure who really control these forces so tightly for so long. When he was struck, that really degraded Iran, it really took away their capability, but it also took away their ability to control these loose groups in Iraq, in Syria, in Jordan, in Yemen.

And they've gotten a little bit out of control. And now he's trying to pull them back. So there's concern in Tehran, there's concern in DC, nobody wants to escalate. So I'm optimistic about that.

John Yang:

Some Republicans in Congress have criticized the Biden administration for what they say waiting too long. The strike was last weekend, that took a full week. What do you make of that? What do you say to that?

Joe Pacino:

I agree. I agree. Look, if there is an intellectual thrust of the Biden foreign policy, it's conflict avoidance, and, you know, avoidance of escalation. And that's generally a good impulse for an American president. Here it doesn't serve us well. And if you look at the history of Iran, it doesn't serve us well here.

You know, for five days, we've been talking about this. For five days, we've been talking about what we're not going to do. And I think it signals to Iran that they can continue to kind of push us around. They can continue to strike at our bases. And we're not going to make them feel pain. Because what we do to the Houthis, here in Yemen, what we do to these Shia groups in Iraq and Syria, it doesn't really manifest in pain in Iran,

John Yang:

Flying bombers halfway around the world to do this. Obviously, there are operational reasons for this. They carry a tremendous amount of payload, they can fly supersonically. But was there also a message being sent?

Joe Pacino:

This is all about a message. So the message here is more important than anything you've hit anything you destroyed any of these Shia groups that you killed. The B1 bombers are important because, you know, they can fly under radar coverage. And if you're going to hit inside Iran, you're going to — you're going to hit or inside of run with a B1 Lancer.

John Yang:

What comes next?

Joe Pacino:

Well, I think what comes next is you're going to see more passes in Iraq and Syria, like we did last night. You're going to see maybe more strikes on the coast of Yemen. Here tonight, we hit the Capitol. I don't think we'll do that again.

I think we'll hit coastal battery sites. I think this will go into next week for a few days into next week. And then we'll see then we kind of wait, did Iran get the message? How is Iran going to respond? How are these Shia groups going to respond? That's what's next.

John Yang:

It'll be the same sort of targets or the targeting change?

Joe Pacino:

No, you're going to see the same kinds of targets the same level of violence. And really, you're going to see these bump — there's a lot more bunkers. So these complexes that, you know, if you think about Deir Zurr in the East there in Syria, in Abu Kamal, these are complexes that have hundreds of bunkers within them. And so you know, you there's a lot more targets you can hit there. We hit 85. That's really not very much. There's a lot more we can do here.

John Yang:

Joe Pacino, retired US Army colonel, thank you very much.

Joe Pacino:

Thanks so much for having me.