An exclusive from the Wall Street Journal claims that the United States did not immediately activate defenses against the drone that killed three of its soldiers at an outpost in Jordan because it mistook it for an American drone that was returning to the base. The attack, carried out this Sunday and claimed by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, which brings together different armed factions supported by Tehran, produced the first three American fatalities since hostility escalated in the region on October 7.
The revelation increases pressure on President Joe Biden, who yesterday assured that the attack will not go unanswered. The attack, which left around thirty people injured, occurred at the Tower 22 military base, located on the border with Syria and Iraq. The US military shot down two other drones heading towards the same target, but the confusion of the first drone with one of its own would have allowed its fatal impact. It is the latest attack of more than 160 targeting US troops since the war in Gaza began, all of them attributed by the Pentagon to armed groups linked to Iran.
While the world watches expectantly, worried about a possible escalation in the region, the consensus in Washington is clear between Democrats and Republicans: aggression cannot go unpunished. The Biden administration is seeking to calibrate between a response forceful enough to deter new attacks, but calculated to avoid direct confrontation with Tehran. “We do not want to follow a path of further escalation that leads to a much broader conflict within the region,” Gen. Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday.
The opposition, which has been calling Biden a “coward” for weeks, has taken the opportunity to hold him responsible for the attack, the last of more than 160 directed at US troops since the war in Gaza began. “We must respond to these repeated attacks by Iran and its allies by directly striking Iranian targets and their leaders,” said Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee. “The Biden administration’s responses so far have only invited more attacks.”
Against the backdrop of a presidential election in November, this is the scenario Biden would have preferred to avoid. His likely rival in the elections, Donald Trump, who sells himself as “the only American who can avoid a third world war,” said in Truth Social that the attack is the “tragic consequence of Biden’s weakness and surrender” to the Tehran regime. Along the same lines, his only rival in the primaries, Nikki Haley, called the attack “absolutely shameful” at a rally in Charleston (South Carolina), where he assured that the president “has to reimpose the sanctions (on Iran). ), stop trying to reach a deal that doesn’t help us and make sure we show American strength.”
Tehran, which has ties to the Islamic Resistance, has denied any involvement in the attack. “The resistance groups in the region are responding to the war crimes and genocide of the child-killing Zionist regime and do not take orders from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Monday. “These groups decide and act based on their own principles and priorities, as well as the interests of their country and their people.”
So far, the US administration has responded with limited and precision attacks to the more than 160 attacks carried out with drones and rockets by pro-Iran militias, mainly the Houthis in Yemen, directed at merchant ships in the Red Sea, which have generated disruptions. on this important trade route.
But the confirmation of three American victims changes the paradigm and, with it, the expected level of response. The three fallen soldiers “were patriots in the highest sense,” Biden said yesterday after requesting a minute of silence, “we will strive to be worthy of their honor and valor.” And he continued: “Have no doubt: we will hold all those responsible accountable at a time and in a manner of our choosing.”
Among the options contemplated by the administration, none of them comfortable, is a direct attack on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s official army, but outside Iranian territory, at one of its bases in Syria or Iraq. The Pentagon is aware, and has stated in the past, that the drones used in other attacks against US targets have been provided by Tehran’s military. But, for the moment, he has not been able to confirm it in this latest attack.
This is precisely the response that Biden has been trying to avoid for more than three months, since it could imply a regional escalation of the conflict and an intensification of the war in Gaza. “We do not want another war, we do not seek an escalation,” National Security Advisor John Kirby said this Monday: “but we will do what is necessary to protect ourselves, to continue with that mission and to respond appropriately to these attacks.”
And, without going into the detail of the form that US retaliation may take, he stated: “we will do it in the way that the President decides, as commander in chief, and we will also do it fully aware of the fact that these groups backed by “Tehran just killed American troops.”
