JERUSALEM, Israel – A top American military general warned lawmakers on Tuesday that Iran has more than 3,000 ballistic missiles that pose a threat to the entire Middle East.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, told Senators during a hearing that, “Iranian ballistics is an existential threat to the security of every country in the region, including our closest partners.”
“The Iranian proxies are spread from Yemen through the Arabian Peninsula, across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the very borders of Israel,” he told the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
Iran has already demonstrated the effectiveness of its ballistic missiles, Gen. McKenzie warned.
“We have seen their capabilities in the attack on the American base in Ein al-Asad in Iraq back in January 2020, when the Iranian missiles hit with a great precision,” he said.
Dozens of US soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries during the 2020 attack.
Most recently, Iran claimed responsibility on Sunday for a barrage of missiles allegedly targeting an Israeli spy center near the US consulate in Iraq. Iran said the attack was in retaliation for Israeli strikes that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard earlier this week.
“They have over 3,000 missiles of various types, some of which can reach Tel Aviv,” McKenzie said. “None of them can reach Europe yet.”
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While the general said countering Iran is his top priority, Russia and China are also trying to expand their influence in the Middle East and Africa, with Moscow being the more “acute threat” right now.
Russia is deeply entrenched in Syria and supports Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad in the country’s decade-long civil war. Russia has been trying to recruit Syrians to fight in the ongoing war in Ukraine, but McKenzie said the US has seen only “very small groups” of Syrians trying to make their way to Eastern Europe.
“Right now, it’s a very small trickle,” he said.
Gen. McKenzie and Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of US Africa Command, told the Senators that Russia and China are trying to fill the void left by American forces leaving the region.
They warned that the complete US withdrawals from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden, and Somalia under former President Donald Trump, have hurt American counterterrorism efforts.
Gen. Townsend said that periodically sending teams of US forces into Somalia is not effective and endangers American troops.
“In my view, we are marching in place at best. We may be backsliding,” he said.
Gen. Townsend said the US is not putting enough pressure on the growing al-Shabab jihadist group in Somalia, and “the best we can do is maintain security around the bases that American troops periodically use.
Meanwhile, Gen. McKenzie said the US has not launched any strikes on Islamic State insurgents in Afghanistan since its withdrawal in September. He said the group is growing and aspires to strike US targets.
The general said that the Taliban, which took control of Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, has been trying to fight the Islamic State, but is having a harder time controlling Al Qaeda in the country because the two groups have been closely aligned for years.
Gen. McKenzie said that without sustained pressure, terror groups have more opportunities to grow and plot attacks.
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