I'm John Bachelor with Joe Truzan and Bill Rajo, the Foundation for the Defense of

Democracy's.

My colleague and co-host Joe is helping us with the podcast he and Bill did Generation

jihad last week and updating it on the violence in the North Gaza and also the threat to Israel from the north by Hezbollah.

Now we go to an active threat, more than a threat, fighting, battling going on in Syria and in Iraq around American deployments that are anti-IS in mission.

The Pentagon responded initially with two

F-16 struck a depot we're told in Syria of I-R-G-C equipment. The second 2-F-15s I believe

struck another depot associated with the

IRGC in Syria and the continued attacks are puzzling.

Bill, the number I saw was 56 wounded so far among the US personnel.

What have we learned about those first two attacks

and what has happened since them. Thank you Bill.

Yes John so of course these attacks are being conducted by the

militias that were created by Iran. Many of them created post-U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. So these are battle-hardened

militias that have fought against the U.S. Iraqi security forces, then against the Islamic State in both

Iraq and in Syria. And now what they're trying to do is to force the US to withdraw from Iraq and Syria because the these

militias and Iran does not like the US presence in the region and they've

capitalized on the fighting between Hamas and the war between Hamas and Israel and they're using that as justification.

So there's been so the official count as far as I'm aware and this is the number that I've came up and Joe Joe and I've been reporting on these militias in the US counter strikes the is about 46 that That number could change.

I think there might be more.

Some of these attacks may have failed

and the Pentagon may not be reporting on some of these attacks.

...