Biden Officials Hold Off on More Airstrikes in Syria, for Now

On Monday, after a weekend free of fresh militia attacks and full of bad weather in eastern Syria that would have made targeting the insurgents more difficult, Biden administration officials said the military stood ready to respond to any new threats to U.S. personnel. But they also seemed eager to move on, avoid escalating the back-and-forth strikes into a wider war with Iran and its proxies, and remain focused on the broader mission of helping root out the pockets of Islamic State fighters still carrying out guerrilla attacks in the region. "We're going to do what we need to do swiftly and boldly to protect our people and our facilities in Syria," John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters on Monday. "We're not going to be deterred from continuing to go after this network in Syria." America still has more than 900 troops, and hundreds more contractors, in Syria, working with Kurdish fighters to make sure there is no resurgence of the Islamic State, which was ostensibly defeated in 2019 after five years of wreaking havoc across Iraq and Syria. In the past year alone, Iranian-backed militias have launched dozens of attacks at or near bases where U.S. troops were present.