Joseph Votel discusses tensions in the Middle East and how the Biden administration could respond to a drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers, on'The Story.' An Iran-backed militant group in Iraq has promised to continue attacks on U.S. troops after three American soldiers were killed by a drone strike in Jordan on Sunday. In a statement released Friday, Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the strongest Iraqi militias, announced that it plans to continue military operations against U.S. forces while allied factions have backed off their attacks after the Biden administration said there will be retaliation. Akram al-Kaabi, the group's leader, called for an end to the Israeli military operations in Gaza and withdrawal of the "American occupation of Iraq," in a statement posted on X. The announcement comes after Kataib Hezbollah, another powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, which is closely monitored by the U.S. government, said on Tuesday that it would "suspend military and security operations against the occupying forces" to avoid embarrassing the Iraqi government.

The United States has approved plans for strikes in Iraq and Syria against multiple targets, including Iranian personnel and facilities, CBS News reported on Thursday, quoting US officials. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he had decided how to respond to a drone attack in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border last Sunday, which killed three US service members and wounded more than 40. Sunday's attack was the first to result in the loss of American lives during the Israel-Hamas war. Here is what's known about the US plans: The US plans to retaliate against the drone attack on the US Tower 22 base near the border between Syria and Jordan by targeting Iranian personnel and facilities inside both countries. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, believed to comprise multiple groups armed, funded and trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, has claimed responsibility for Sunday's strike on the base. But on Wednesday, Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful element in the force, announced the suspension of hostile operations against US troops.

About three hours later, U.S. forces shot down an armed Houthi drone flying over the Gulf of Aden, Central Command said. About five hours after that, the military destroyed an explosives-laden naval drone that Central Command said was launched toward commercial ships and Navy vessels in the Red Sea. There were no injuries or damage reported in either incident. Finally, around 12:45 p.m., two anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Houthi-controlled territory, probably toward a Liberian-flagged, Bermuda-owned cargo ship, M/V Koi, in the Red Sea, Central Command said. The missiles landed harmlessly in the water.

The United States military has carried out new strikes against 10 drones belonging to the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen as well as a ground control centre. On Thursday, US forces targeted a "Houthi UAV ground control station and 10 Houthi one-way UAVs" that "presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the US Navy ships in the region", the US military's Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. "This action will protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US Navy vessels and merchant vessels," it added. The group said on Wednesday that all US and British warships participating in "aggression" against Yemen are targets, heightening concerns over the escalating tensions in the region as well as the increased disruption to world trade. CENTCOM said earlier that the USS Carney had shot down an antiship ballistic missile fired by the Houthis and downed three Iranian drones less than an hour later.

We introduce an approach for analyzing the responses of dynamical systems to external perturbations that combines score-based generative modeling with the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem (FDT). The methodology enables accurate estimation of system responses, especially for systems with non-Gaussian statistics, often encountered in dynamical systems far from equilibrium. Such cases often present limitations for conventional approximate methods. We numerically validate our approach using time-series data from a stochastic partial differential equation where the score function is available analytically. Furthermore, we demonstrate the improved accuracy of our methodology over conventional methods and its potential as a versatile tool for understanding complex dynamical systems. Applications span disciplines from climate science and finance to neuroscience.

Anthropogenic influences have been linked to tropical cyclone (TC) poleward migration, TC extreme precipitation, and an increased proportion of major hurricanes [1, 2, 3, 4]. Understanding past TC trends and variability is critical for projecting future TC impacts on human society considering the changing climate [5]. However, past trends of TC structure/energy remain uncertain due to limited observations; subjective-analyzed and spatiotemporal-heterogeneous "best-track" datasets lead to reduced confidence in the assessed TC repose to climate change [6, 7]. Here, we use deep learning to reconstruct past "observations" and yield an objective global TC wind profile dataset during 1981 to 2020, facilitating a comprehensive examination of TC structure/energy. By training with uniquely labeled data integrating best tracks and numerical model analysis of 2004 to 2018 TCs, our model converts multichannel satellite imagery to a 0-750-km wind profile of axisymmetric surface winds. The model performance is verified to be sufficient for climate studies by comparing it to independent satellite-radar surface winds. Based on the new homogenized dataset, the major TC proportion has increased by ~13% in the past four decades. Moreover, the proportion of extremely high-energy TCs has increased by ~25%, along with an increasing trend (> one standard deviation of the 40-y variability) of the mean total energy of high-energy TCs. Although the warming ocean favors TC intensification, the TC track migration to higher latitudes and altered environments further affect TC structure/energy. This new deep learning method/dataset reveals novel trends regarding TC structure extremes and may help verify simulations/studies regarding TCs in the changing climate.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby reiterated Wednesday that the U.S. will respond after three American soldiers were killed in a drone attack by an Iran-backed proxy group. President Biden on Tuesday blamed Iran for providing weapons to the militant groups that perpetuated the attack and said he had decided how to respond but did not offer further details. But with no public action in the days since the attack, a reporter asked Kirby whether the White House had missed an opportunity to signal resolve. "I think we signal resolve pretty well. And as I said the other day, we'll respond on our own time, on our own schedule, and we'll do that," Kirby said at the daily White House press briefing.

Iranian officials warned that Tehran would decisively respond to any U.S. attacks, as President Biden vowed unspecified action following the deaths of three American soldiers in Jordan. "We hear threats coming from American officials, we tell them that they have already tested us, and we now know one another, no threat will be left unanswered," Iranian Revolutionary Guards' chief Hossein Salami said on Wednesday, Reuters reported, citing the semi-official Tasnim news agency. "We are not after war, but we have no fear of war," Salami, who answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said at an event Wednesday, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. Another warning came from Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in New York. UNITED NATIONS SPOX INSISTS'UNRWA DOES NOT WORK WITH HAMAS' DESPITE CLAIMS EMPLOYEES PARTICIPATED IN OCT. 7 FILE - Iran's United Nations Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani addresses the U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters on Feb. 23, 2023.

An Iran-backed militia group in Iraq says it is suspending attacks on U.S. troops after a drone attack killed three soldiers early Sunday, but the Department of Defense is casting doubt on those claims. The Iraq-based Kataeb Hezbollah said Tuesday it was suspending "military and security operations against the occupying forces to avoid any embarrassment for the Iraqi government." Gen. Ryder speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024 in Washington. The group is one of multiple Iranian proxies in the region that are believed responsible for carrying out attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq, Syria, and, most recently, Jordan over the past several months. The groups say the attacks are in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in its ongoing offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza and the mounting death toll of Palestinian civilians.

On Sunday, January 28, The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group that includes the militias Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba among others, claimed responsibility for a drone attack that killed three US military personnel and injured 34 others in a base in northeastern Jordan, near the Syria border. In the media coverage of the attack, it was repeatedly mentioned that these militias have launched 165 attacks on US troops – 66 in Iraq and 98 in Syria – since October 2023. While it helps put the attack in context, this is a misleading figure. This conflict began much earlier than last October, and thus the total number of attacks the US has faced from these militias is actually much higher. Indeed, Sunday's drone attack was just the latest episode in an undeclared war between the United States and Iran-affiliated Iraqi Shia militias that has been raging across the region for more than five years. More than six years ago, in October 2017, in an article published on this very page, I predicted that US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the "Iran nuclear deal", would result in attacks by Iran-backed Iraqi militias on US forces in Iraq and across the region.