WASHINGTON — Despite large-scale U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed militants across the Middle East, Iran is continuing to provide weapons and intelligence to its proxies, according to three U.S. officials, a Middle Eastern official and a congressional aide with knowledge of the matter.
Iran’s flow of arms and intelligence to its surrogates across the Middle East, who recently conducted a drone strike in Jordan that killed three American service members and wounded dozens of others, persists even as the Biden administration contends that Tehran does not want a wider war in the region, the sources said.
The assistance from Iran has included intelligence for Houthi forces in Yemen that helps them more precisely attack sites where U.S. forces are stationed in the region, as well as target commercial ships in the Red Sea, according to the U.S. officials.
“They are using intelligence from Iran to give them some targeting information,” Rear Adm. Marc Miguez, the commander of the U.S. carrier strike group currently deployed in the Red Sea, said of the Houthis in an interview with NBC News.
Administration officials have said that a series of airstrikes approved last week by President Joe Biden in response to the deaths of the American service members are designed to send a clear message to Iran and its proxies that the U.S. will not tolerate attacks on its troops or assaults on cargo ships in the Red Sea.
But Iran’s decision to continue sending weapons and intelligence to its proxy forces, which show few signs of halting attacks, suggests that the airstrikes that began Friday have so far done little to blunt Iran’s efforts.