Attacks in Syria and Iraq Ratchet Tensions in a Region Already on Edge

Iran accused Israel of launching an airstrike on the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Saturday that killed senior Iranian military figures, the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on officials from Iran and two of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran vowed to retaliate, raising fears of even deeper regional turmoil rippling out from the war in Gaza.

Separately, several U.S. troops in Iraq were injured on Saturday when their air base in the western part of the country came under heavy rocket or missile fire from what American officials said were Iran-backed militias. It was the most serious of roughly 140 such rocket and missile strikes against U.S. troops based in Iraq and Syria over the past several months. The two incidents underlined the growing volatility in the Middle East. Since Oct. 7, when Hamas, an ally of Iran, charged into Israel and carried out its terror attack. Israel has responded with a ferocious war in Gaza. Across the region, a dizzying array of strikes and counterstrikes risk spinning the conflict into a wider war.

In the last week alone, the list of attacks and reprisals has been long and daunting: Iran fired missiles toward Iraq, Syria and Pakistan; Pakistan responded by striking Iranian territory. Turkey hit Kurdish targets in northern Iraq and Syria; Hamas fired rockets toward Israel; Israel continued to pound southern Gaza and struck southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah militants have fired rockets toward Israel in recent months. Houthi militants in Yemen took aim at commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and the United States retaliated with seven rounds of strikes against Houthi targets.

Some of those attacks had no apparent connection to the war in Gaza. But taken together, they underlined the danger that a particularly deadly strike — an accident or a deliberate provocation — could lead to irreversible escalation and a broader conflict.