Sovereignty Support Movement Sovereignty for West Asia
by Vanesssa Beeley, pubilshed on Substack, July 19, 2026
On Friday 17th July, Iran carried out an extensive attack on the US occupation base at Al Tanf in Syria. A drone and missile strike targeted a US Special Operations Command base in south-eastern Syria..the first strike on Syrian territory since the toppling of the former government in December 2024.
In a statement, the IRGC said its aerospace forces conducted what it described as the 11th phase of “Operation Nasr-2,” targeting the strategically located base near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan.
The IRGC further claimed the attack destroyed a radar installation and several U.S. military helicopters, while alleging that many American personnel were killed.
This strike occurred as the build up of both Turkish and HTS military forces increases inside Syria, along the border with Lebanon and in the coastal region to the north of Lebanon. I have been reporting on this here and here.
Syrian sources provided more detail on the attack:
Despite previous reports of an almost total evacuation of the Al Tanf base, located on the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan, almost 5 months ago – the intensity of the strikes suggested a shift in the site’s operational status. This was not an empty base, in fact, according to sources, the IRGC’s tracking systems and human intelligence in the region detected U.S. forces airdropping “Special Forces” units into the base approximately two weeks before the attack.
Analysis would suggest that the purpose of these drops might be to prepare for a ground incursion across Iraqi territory (Sulaymaniyah Axis) in coordination with the local Kurdish separatist factions in Iraq. One military analyst told me:
The attack reflects the operator’s ability to breach the secrecy surrounding U.S. movements and to convert radio and visual data into precise target coordinates.
According to reports from inside Syria, the strikes inflicted direct damage on the base’s newly constructed infrastructure, neutralised the US elite combat force and derailed the Iraq-Axis operation against Iran. Of course, US media will not report on the planned operations or on the number of casualties – such a critical security breach and the significant scale of damage, as reported, will not be revealed.
More to follow as the situation in Syria develops.
Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist and photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East – on the ground in Syria,Egypt, Iraq and Palestine, while also covering the conflict in Yemen since 2015. In 2017 Vanessa was a finalist for the presitigioius Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism which was won by the much-acclaimed Robert Parry that year. In 2018 Vanessa was named one of the 238 most respected journalists in the UK by the British National Council for the Training of Journalists.
