“You can’t act with impunity. Be careful.” United States President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters in Texas on Friday, was responding to a question as to whether he had sent some message to Iran with Thursday’s attack in Syria on Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, two Iraqi Shia militia groups.

The Pentagon said the strike, which killed at least 22 according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights with seven satellite-guided 227kg bombs, was a “proportionate” response to rocket attacks on US forces in Iraq, although the Pentagon did not demonstrate any link with the two militias. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Friday said the US wanted to make it “very, very clear — notably to Iran — that they cannot act with impunity against our people, our partners, our interests.”

On February 15, rockets hit the US military base at Erbil Airport, northern Iraq, killing a non-American contractor and wounding several people, including a US soldier. The attack was claimed by an unknown group the Guardians of Blood. Other rockets subsequently hit a base hosting US forces north of Baghdad.

While several Iraq groups oppose the US troop presence, which the parliament has voted to end, the picture is complicated by Tehran and Washington maneuvering for leverage in possible talks on reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Washington has sent some conciliatory signals since President Joe Biden took over from his predecessor Donald Trump, who spoke to Iran with a language of threat or mockery. 

But the Biden administration has argued that reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump abandoned in 2018 before imposing draconian sanctions, requires Iran to first reverse steps it has taken since 2019 expanding its atomic program beyond the deal’s limits. Thursday’s attack in Syria, which a senior US official said was a “middle” military option in a broad range, might be a sign that Biden will take a different approach if Tehran did not accept US demands.

Iranian officials have given a muted reaction. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh called the US attack “unlawful aggression” and a violation of international law, and did not comment on the Pentagon’s assertions over the targeted groups’ links to Iran. The media, including hardline news agencies, shied away from commenting on Biden’s remarks.

The Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, for instance, reported on Biden's comments quoting Russia’s Sputnik without its own comments. On the same day Tasnim ran a story from Reuters about Biden’s approach to Saudi Arabia, while its top story featured new images that CBS aired in a program on Friday on Iran’s ballistic missile attack on January 8, 2020, on the al-Assad military base in Iraq, which hosted US troops. Fars News Agency, also affiliated to the IRGC, had nothing on Biden’s comments on its front page.

Fuad Hussein, Iraq’s foreign minister, arrived in Tehran Saturday morning [27 February] for talks with Iranian officials and met with Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).  According to Tasnim news agency, in the meeting Shamkhani “decried the recent ‘brutal’ US strikes on the Iraqi forces in Syria as part of attempts to revive ‘organized terrorism’, vowing that Iran will not allow a resurgence of Takfiri terrorism [Sunni extremist, especially the Islamic State group] in the region.” The report made no mention of Biden’s remarks and did not link the Syria attack to Iran.