Russia joins Iran allies in condemning U.S. airstrikes, warns of escalation

The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin joined with a collection of Iran-allied forces across the Middle East Saturday in denouncing President Biden’s decision to target anti-U.S. militia groups in Iraq and Syria with a string of airstrikes.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it would ask the U.N. Security Council to investigate Friday’s strikes, which the Pentagon said hit 85 targets in seven locations and which reportedly killed at least 40 people in the two countries.

The Kremlin echoed critical statements from Iran allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip warning that the U.S. strikes would only inflame a region on edge and were intended to ignite a larger war against Iran.

“Obviously, the airstrikes are deliberately aimed at fueling the conflict further,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement, the official Tass news agency reported. “Attacking the targets of allegedly pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria nearly nonstop recently, the United States has been deliberately attempting to get the region’s major nations dragged into conflict.”

Iraq’s government, torn between its ties to Washington and its desire for good relations with neighboring Iran, stepped up its criticism of the American airstrikes, which it says are a violation of its sovereignty.

Iraq hosts some 2,500 U.S. troops fighting jihadist groups such as Islamic State but is also home to powerful paramilitary Shiite militias that resent the American presence and have launched repeated attacks at installations housing U.S. forces.

The Baghdad government on Saturday said it summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires to deliver a formal protest of the attacks on Iraqi “military and civilian sites.” The Iraqis claimed that at least some of the confirmed casualties in the bombings were civilians.

The Biden administration did get some diplomatic backup over the weekend.

The British government said the U.S. had the right to respond following Sunday’s drone strike on a base in Jordan that killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more. The U.S. says the umbrella group for Iraq’s militias was responsible for the attack.

 “We wouldn’t comment on their operations, but we support their right to respond to attacks,” a British government spokesperson told The Guardian newspaper.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on a visit to Brussels told reporters that Iran’s regional surrogates were guilty of provoking the attacks through assaults on U.S., Israeli and other allied interests across the region.

“Iran’s proxies have played with fire for months and years, and it’s now burning them,” Mr. Sikorski said, according to the Reuters news agency.

The Pentagon on Friday said the strikes targeted headquarters sites, intelligence centers and drone and ammunition storage buildings used by terrorists and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, which handles Tehran’s diplomatic and security ties to the regional militias.