U.S  and Allied Forces Carry Out Widespread Airstrikes Against ISIS Targets in Syria

By: Fern Sidman

The dust over the Syrian desert had barely settled when the United States Central Command delivered a declaration of intent that reverberated far beyond the immediate theater of operations. In a statement released Saturday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that American forces, acting alongside regional partners, had launched a sweeping series of strikes against Islamic State (ISIS) targets across Syria—an offensive that Israel National News reported is among the most consequential American counterterrorism actions in the region in recent months.

According to the report on Sunday morning at Israel National News, the assault forms part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, a campaign launched on December 19, 2025, under the direct orders of President Donald Trump. The operation was conceived in response to a brutal ambush near Palmyra six days earlier, in which an ISIS operative killed two U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter supporting American forces.

That attack marked one of the deadliest ISIS assaults on American personnel in Syria in recent years, underscoring the grim reality that the terror organization—despite having lost its territorial “caliphate”—remains capable of lethal operations.

The Dec. 13 ambush outside Palmyra sent shockwaves through Washington’s security establishment. ISIS, long thought to be relegated to the margins of Syria’s fractured conflict, had struck at the heart of a U.S. deployment with surgical cruelty. Two American service members were killed alongside a Syrian interpreter whose work had placed him squarely in the crosshairs of jihadist retribution.

Israel National News reported that within days, senior defense officials were signaling that a forceful response was imminent. When Operation Hawkeye Strike was formally announced on December 19, it was framed not as a limited reprisal but as a renewed campaign to decapitate ISIS’s residual networks across the Syrian landscape.

CENTCOM’s Saturday statement detailed how U.S. and coalition forces executed large-scale strikes against multiple ISIS positions throughout Syria. The opening salvo of Hawkeye Strike was particularly ferocious: American and Jordanian forces jointly targeted more than 70 ISIS sites in central Syria, deploying over 100 precision-guided munitions in a single day.

The breadth of the strikes was designed to overwhelm ISIS’s remaining infrastructure—arms caches, command posts, safe houses, and transit routes used by sleeper cells. CENTCOM officials told Israel National News that the goal was not merely to punish the group for the Palmyra ambush but to cripple its operational capacity for months to come.

“Our message remains strong: if you harm our warfighters, we will find you and kill you anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you try to evade justice,” the CENTCOM statement declared, a line that the Israel National News report described as emblematic of Washington’s hardened posture toward jihadist groups.

In the days following the initial onslaught, U.S. and partner forces sustained relentless pressure. According to the information provided in the Israel National News report, by December 31 nearly 25 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured as a result of Hawkeye Strike operations.

Military analysts speaking to Israel National News cautioned that while the numbers may appear modest compared to earlier phases of the anti-ISIS campaign, they are significant given the organization’s current decentralized structure. Today’s ISIS fighters operate in small, mobile cells, making them harder to detect but also more vulnerable to targeted intelligence-driven strikes.

To grasp the significance of Operation Hawkeye Strike, one must revisit ISIS’s dramatic rise and fall. In 2014, the group overran vast tracts of Syria and Iraq, proclaiming a so-called caliphate that ruled over millions with medieval brutality. Its black banners flew over Raqqa, Mosul, and countless towns whose names became synonymous with mass executions, sexual enslavement, and cultural annihilation.

Israel National News has chronicled how successive military campaigns—many coordinated by a U.S.-led international coalition—systematically dismantled ISIS’s territorial holdings. By the time Raqqa fell, the caliphate existed only in name.

Yet, ISIS did not vanish. Instead, it metastasized into an insurgent force, burrowing into the deserts and urban peripheries of Syria and Iraq, sustained by ideological fervor and opportunistic alliances.

The United States maintains several hundred troops in Syria precisely because of this enduring threat. Israel National News has consistently reported that American forces in the region are tasked with advising local partners, gathering intelligence, and conducting targeted operations to prevent ISIS from regrouping.

The Palmyra ambush revealed just how precarious that mission remains. Even a single operative, armed with little more than determination and basic weaponry, can inflict grievous losses. Hawkeye Strike, therefore, is not merely punitive—it is preventive.

One of the notable features of Operation Hawkeye Strike is the prominent role played by Jordanian forces. Jordan, long a linchpin in regional security architecture, has borne the brunt of spillover from Syria’s civil war and the rise of jihadist networks.

By coordinating closely with Amman, CENTCOM ensured that the opening phase of the campaign leveraged regional expertise and shared intelligence. This partnership underscores a broader strategy: embedding U.S. counterterrorism efforts within a lattice of regional alliances to amplify their reach and legitimacy.

CENTCOM’s statement was unambiguous in its broader intent. “U.S. and coalition forces remain resolute in pursuing terrorists who seek to harm the United States,” it declared. The Israel National News report noted that this language was deliberately global in scope, signaling to jihadist networks from North Africa to South Asia that geography will not shield them from retribution.

The warning was not lost on regional actors. In recent years, ISIS affiliates have sought to exploit power vacuums across the Middle East, hoping that the world’s attention had shifted elsewhere. Operation Hawkeye Strike is designed to disabuse them of that notion.

For President Trump, Hawkeye Strike marks a reaffirmation of a doctrine that has characterized much of his approach to terrorism: swift retaliation, overwhelming force, and unambiguous messaging. Israel National News has reported on how Trump has framed counterterrorism not as a protracted nation-building exercise but as a series of decisive, kinetic actions aimed at eradicating threats before they metastasize.

Critics argue that such operations risk inflaming local tensions, but supporters counter that restraint has too often emboldened adversaries. The Palmyra ambush, in their view, was precisely the kind of provocation that demands a muscular response.

Even as Hawkeye Strike degrades ISIS’s capabilities, few in the security community harbor illusions about final victory. The report at Israel National News warned that jihadist ideology cannot be bombed into oblivion. As long as Syria remains fragmented and impoverished, the soil for extremism will endure.

Still, the message emanating from Washington this week is unmistakable. The era of tolerating ISIS’s shadow resurgence is over. Operation Hawkeye Strike is not merely a military maneuver; it is a declaration that the United States intends to remain an active, if selective, combatant in the long war against jihadist terror.

In the deserts around Palmyra, the echoes of American airstrikes now mingle with the memory of fallen soldiers. For CENTCOM, for the families of the victims, and for a world still haunted by ISIS’s crimes, Hawkeye Strike is meant to serve as both requiem and warning: harm American forces, and the response will be neither slow nor forgiving