president and his team today retaliatory strike by the united states in syria, the pentagon says president biden authorized the strike after an american contractor was killed and five u. s service members injured in syria. the administration says the americans were attacked by a drone officials say came from iran. let s begin at the pentagon with cnn s oren liebermann or what are you learning about the u. s personnel involved here and how frequently attacks like this happen? the latest update we have on the u. s personnel involved here is that there were five service members injured. they are in stable condition. two of them were treated at the scene. three of them had to be taken to coalition medical facilities in iraq. there was also one other u. s contractor injured that, in addition, according to the pentagon to the one u. s contractor who was killed in this one way, you wavy attackers. suicide drone attack . the pentagon says the drone was of iranian origin, likely indic
times. it s great to see you. thanks for making time. we were just hearing that reporting from natasha, and she talked about how the pentagon is investigating and can t really elaborate yet as to how this actually happened, how this drone was able to cross into that airspace that they had a full view of the radar. what do you think about that? and do you have any thoughts on how that might have happened? technology is in perfect and depending on the size of the drone, because the pentagon hasn t released that it could have been something that was small enough to somehow evade radar. now look , the forces in syria are fairly constantly regularly under attack by iranian backed groups , according to us officials in the central command, chief general eric parrilla said just this past week in testimony to congress that us forces had been hit more than 70 times since 2001 by these iran backed groups , so it s something that they
or are affiliated with iran. in response, the us carried out what it called a proportionate, deliberate action in response targeting facilities belonging to iran s islamic revolutionary guard corps, so facilities not directly linked with the strike itself. but the organization that works with these iranian militias in terms of how often these happened that number quite surprising, general eric parrilla said yesterday. that there have been 78 drone or rocket attacks against u. s personnel in the middle east since the beginning of 2021 that averages out to about one every 10 days or so, so these attacks happen. of course it s not often you see this sort of tragic end these attacks, whether it s a rocket attack or a drone attack in terms of iran s drone program in general, the pentagon views that as very advanced and we ve seen evidence of how advanced iranian drones can be. in terms of russia, employing those in ukraine. so iran has this capability and its proxies use this capabilities t
rapidly turned in one direction . five degrees. you never get back on the same path again. but but you re on a different course where the decisions we make in the coming years will determine the course of our world for decades to come. it happens every five or six generations, but we re at that point. nothing gives me greater confidence in the future of the knowing connect canada and the united states stand together still. today i d like to speak to a little bit about the future for me. a future that s ours to seize. you know, i get criticized at home, sometimes for saying that i used to always keep rock for president obama. he s always kidding me because i always say to him in our private meetings. countries never more optimistic than as president. or its leaders. well i have never been more optimistic in my life about the prospects. i really mean this the bottom of my heart. we are so welcome to the future, build around our shared responsibilities, prosperity, security shar