What Biden's Actually Doing With Those Drone Strikes in the Middle East

Four months into the war between Israel and Hamas, the combatants, their allies, and their neighbors are closer than ever to reaching a cease-fire or even a settlement of their disputes--and are also equally close to seeing it spin out of control into a widening regional conflict. They are tracing this thin line between negotiated peace and escalating mayhem along every front of the Middle East's hot spots, which are intensifying, enlarging, and mingling with one another--a fact that makes it harder but also potentially more manageable to douse the flames. On Friday, U.S. combat planes fired 125 precision-guided missiles and drones at 85 targets into seven facilities--command-control and intelligence centers, supply lines and storage sites for rockets, missiles, and drones, as well as other military targets--all run by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. The attack was in retaliation to a Jan. 28 drone strike launched by one of those militias in Iraq that killed three U.S. soldiers at a base in northeastern Jordan, near the Iraqi and Syrian borders. Militias had fired 165 drones or missiles at U.S. forces in the region since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, but this was the first strike that killed Americans.