Uploaded October 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
WASHINGTON — U.S. officials say Iran was behind the kamikaze drone strikes against U.S. forces in Syria last week. Here are the details:
The Associated Press reports that U.S. officials said on Monday, October 25 that they believe Iran was behind the drone attack on the al-Tanf military outpost in Syria where U.S. troops are based.
The drone attack happened on Wednesday, October 20, and U.S. officials say the drones were Iranian and Iran appears to have facilitated their use.
Officials said they believe the attacks involved as many as five kamikaze drones laden with explosive charges, and that they hit both the U.S. side of al-Tanf garrison and the side where Syrian opposition forces stay.
The proliferation of these crude kamikaze drones is part of Iran’s regional strategy.
The country supports proxies, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, with weapons platforms, says David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Often, drones are shipped in parts from Iran and assembled in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
There were no reported injuries or deaths as a result of the attack.
U.S. and coalition troops are based at al-Tanf to train Syrian forces on patrols to counter Islamic State militants. The base is located on a road that serves as a vital link for Iranian-backed forces from Tehran all the way to southern Lebanon and Israel.
SOURCES: Al-jazeera, Bloomberg, VOA, Times of Israel, Army Times
aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/25/officials-iran-behind-drone-attack-on-us-base-in-syria
bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-21/attack-on-u-s-base-shows-how-iran-is-leveling-drone-battlefield
voanews.com/a/attack-hit-base-in-syria-used-by-us-troops-/6279744.html
timesofisrael.com/explosions-rock-base-housing-us-troops-in-syrian-desert
armytimes.com/news/2021/10/25/officials-iran-behind-drone-attack-on-us-base-in-syria
WASHINGTON — U.S. officials say Iran was behind the kamikaze drone strikes against U.S. forces in Syria last week. Here are the details:
The Associated Press reports that U.S. officials said on Monday, October 25 that they believe Iran was behind the drone attack on the al-Tanf military outpost in Syria where U.S. troops are based.
The drone attack happened on Wednesday, October 20, and U.S. officials say the drones were Iranian and Iran appears to have facilitated their use.
Officials said they believe the attacks involved as many as five kamikaze drones laden with explosive charges, and that they hit both the U.S. side of al-Tanf garrison and the side where Syrian opposition forces stay.
The proliferation of these crude kamikaze drones is part of Iran’s regional strategy.
The country supports proxies, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, with weapons platforms, says David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Often, drones are shipped in parts from Iran and assembled in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
There were no reported injuries or deaths as a result of the attack.
U.S. and coalition troops are based at al-Tanf to train Syrian forces on patrols to counter Islamic State militants. The base is located on a road that serves as a vital link for Iranian-backed forces from Tehran all the way to southern Lebanon and Israel.
SOURCES: Al-jazeera, Bloomberg, VOA, Times of Israel, Army Times
aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/25/officials-iran-behind-drone-attack-on-us-base-in-syria
bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-21/attack-on-u-s-base-shows-how-iran-is-leveling-drone-battlefield
voanews.com/a/attack-hit-base-in-syria-used-by-us-troops-/6279744.html
timesofisrael.com/explosions-rock-base-housing-us-troops-in-syrian-desert
armytimes.com/news/2021/10/25/officials-iran-behind-drone-attack-on-us-base-in-syria




![Russian Invasion: Disturbing Radioactive Dust at Chernobyl Suicidal
CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE — Chernobyl dust kicked up during Russian capture of the site a suicidal decision for soldiers involved. Explainer.
Russian soldiers who drove their vehicles through Chernobyl’s toxic ‘red forest’ kicked up clouds of radioactive dust on their way to capturing the nuclear site in the opening days of Russia’s invasion, according to plant workers cited by Reuters, with a sensor near waste storage facilities recording the absorbed dose of radiation as seven times higher than normal, according to the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management.
Without radiation protection, this was ‘suicidal’ for the soldiers, according to one Chernobyl worker, as the radioactive dust is likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies.
However, it is not the main nuclear threat to Ukraine right now, according to nuclear expert Vadim Chumak, cited by MIT Technology Review.
Rather, the main threat comes through spent fuel. There are about 20,000 spent fuel assemblies stored at the Chernobyl site, and they contain a huge amount of fission products, such as cesium and strontium, which are very radioactive. If Russia was ‘crazy enough’ to demolish these storage sites, Chumak said, it would “pose a problem.”
The scale of that problem at Chernobyl is mitigated by the fact that the material has already decayed over time. However, elsewhere, at Zaporizhzhia, the second Ukrainian nuclear plant the Russians have captured, any damage to the spent fuel assemblies could “result in an enormous radiological emergency, comparable to what happened [originally] in Chernobyl,” according to Chumak.
This possibility is of particular concern because while reactor buildings are extremely difficult to destroy, spent fuel assembly storage was never designed to be attacked by tanks or missiles, and “definitely could not resist a strike by modern weapons.”
What’s more, the vulnerability of these bundles of used fuel rods was demonstrated in Fukushima, according to Chumak. There, the developers ‘put countermeasures for a tsunami in place to protect the equipment. But the tsunami was one or two meters higher than predicted for the worst-case scenario,’ he said. In that instance, rising temperatures in spent fuel rods along with explosions and a fire contributed to the release of higher levels of radiation from the plant.
SOURCES: Reuters, MIT Technology Review
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-chernobyl-radioactive-dust-b2046066.html
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/25/1048297/nuclear-risk-in-ukraine-a-radiation-expert-speaks-from-kyiv/ Russian Invasion: Disturbing Radioactive Dust at Chernobyl Suicidal](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uHoiasExuSI/mqdefault.jpg)





