According to activists, the US army had previously killed at least 14 pro-Iranian fighters in several airstrikes. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attacks targeted an arms depot in the city of Deir Essor and targets in the cities of Mayadin and Albu Kamal, near the Iraqi border.

The United States was responding to a drone attack on the Hassake military base in northeastern Syria, in which, according to the Pentagon, an employee of a US contractor was killed and one of his colleagues and five US soldiers were injured. According to the US Department of Defense, the drone was "of Iranian origin".

Before Biden's comments, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he had ordered the "precision strikes" on positions by "groups allied with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards" on Biden's instructions. The US Army was responding to the recent attack and "a series of attacks" by groups linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards against forces of the US-led military coalition in Syria.

A few hours after the US airstrikes on Friday, ten rockets were fired at US soldiers and their allies at a base in northeastern Syria, according to the US Army. There were no injuries or damage at the base, but one of the rockets hit a house five kilometers away. Two women and two children suffered minor injuries.

Around 900 US soldiers are stationed in Syria as part of a Washington-led coalition fighting remaining fighters from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist militia in the war-torn country.

In 2014, in the middle of the civil war in Syria, IS took control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, but gradually lost these areas again. After a US-led coalition with the help of Kurdish fighters drove IS out of the last bastions in Syria in March 2019, most of the remaining IS fighters withdrew to the Syrian desert.