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U.S. weighs response to killing of its troops in tinderbox Middle East [1]
['Loveday Morris', 'Susannah George']
Date: 2024-01-29
As the United States mulls its response to a drone attack that killed three U.S. troops and injured at least 34, it treads a risky line, where any misstep could embroil Washington and its allies more deeply in a war with Iran and its proxies. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Biden has vowed retaliation following the Sunday attack that was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group for Iranian-linked militias including Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba. Speaking to CNBC on Monday morning, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the United States would react “in a time and a manner of our choosing.”
“We don’t want a wider war with Iran,” he said. “We don’t want a wider war in the region, but we’ve got to do what we have to do.” The United States has not confirmed that the Islamic Resistance carried out the attack, and Kirby said Monday that Washington is still working through the intelligence. However, the attack “clearly ... has all the earmarks” of a group or groups supported by Kataib Hezbollah, he said.
Washington has struggled to contain the spillover as the enormous toll of Israel’s military operations in Gaza — with more than 26,000 people killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry — has reverberated across the Middle East. But despite those efforts, conflict has erupted on multiple fronts.
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The U.S. deaths on Sunday in Jordan were the first in more than 170 attacks on U.S. military bases in the region, mainly in Syria and Iraq, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The United States has carried out dozens of attacks in retaliation, including one in Baghdad that killed a senior Nujaba commander. Washington has also intervened to bomb Iranian-linked Houthis in Yemen in response to their blocking of international shipping routes in what they say is retaliation against Israel.
Now, with American blood spilled, the message of deterrence is expected to be more robust, raising the danger of further escalation.
Driving home the complexity of the multifront conflict, more cross-border strikes were reported in the region Monday morning: Iraqi militias claimed to have targeted Israel, while Iran and Syria accused Israel of striking in Damascus.
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The killing of the U.S. soldiers adds “further anxiety that a regional war is actually here,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London’s Chatham House think tank. The chances of containment all hinge on “who, what, when and how the Biden administration responds,” she said, adding that she expected “surgical” U.S. strikes against Iranian-linked assets outside Iran to follow.
Iran, for its part, tried to distance itself from the attack on the U.S. troops.
“The resistance groups in the region do not take orders from the Islamic Republic of Iran in their decisions and actions,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani. He described the accusations against Tehran as “baseless.”
Kanaani said Iran has worked to calm regional tensions “through diplomatic means,” but he accused the United States of “exacerbating insecurity” by maintaining a military presence in Iraq and Syria and launching strikes on Yemen.
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The United States has stationed a few thousand troops in Iraq and Syria for nearly 10 years with the stated mission of preventing the resurgence of the Islamic State group.
The actions through proxies give Iran a cloak of plausible deniability, Vakil said.
“Iran certainly is trying to take advantage of the war in Gaza to showcase its transnational axis,” Vakil said, adding that “at the same time Iran itself doesn’t want to bear the cost of sponsoring the axis.” Tehran is banking on the fact that the Biden administration doesn’t want to see the war spread, she said, but it is a “very dangerous gamble.”
Escalation concerns within the Biden administration surged in recent weeks and spurred a renewed diplomatic push to get Israel and Hamas back to the negotiating table, according to two officials briefed on the talks.
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U.S. officials began increasing pressure on Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement after a spike in Red Sea attacks triggered a U.S.-led bombing campaign against Houthi rebels, the officials said. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
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The proposal that Hamas and Israel are considering calls for a lengthy pause in fighting and a phased hostage release that U.S. officials are hopeful could evolve into a permanent cease-fire.
The Biden administration is eager to cool regional hostilities and shift the focus back to its ambitious diplomatic effort to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Houthi rebels have said the Red Sea attacks will cease once the war in Gaza ends.
But hawkish Republicans are now calling for a direct hit on Iran in response to Sunday’s attack.
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“Hit Iran now. Hit them hard,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Biden had left U.S. forces as “sitting ducks” in the region. “The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also portrayed Iran — and its nuclear program — as an existential threat to Israel.
“If Iran is doing all this now, when it does not possess nuclear weapons, imagine how essential it is to prevent it from having nuclear weapons,” he said earlier this month.
Iran has also accused Israel of carrying out a Jan. 20 strike on the Syrian capital, Damascus, which it said killed five Iranian military advisers. Israel has not confirmed or denied the attack, but Netanyahu has said Israel is “acting against Iran all the time, everywhere.”
It’s just one of multiple spheres of conflict. While Hezbollah has so far appeared to show little desire to escalate a war with Israel and diplomats scramble to avert all-out war on that front, the two sides have been regularly trading fire over the border between southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
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Iraqi militias showed little sign that they planned to relent on Monday, as the Islamic Resistance announced its drone attack within Israel. The group said in a statement that a dawn strike targeted a “Zionist military base” in retaliation for “massacres” committed against Palestinians in Gaza, without giving further details. The Israeli military declined to comment on whether there were any strikes or infiltration of its airspace.
Syrian state media later said Israel launched an air attack from the direction of the Golan Heights, “targeting a number of points south of Damascus.” There were conflicting reports about what was hit and whether Iranians or local citizens were killed.
The state news outlet Sana first reported that “Iranian advisers” and civilians were killed, but later changed the story to remove the reference to the advisers. Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, also denied that an Iranian installation was targeted and said no Iranian citizens or advisers were killed.
The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani urged an “end to the cycle of violence” on Monday. “Iraq expresses readiness to work on establishing fundamental rules to avoid further repercussions in the region and prevent the widening of the conflict,” according to a statement. “The impact of these developments threatens regional and international peace and security, undermines efforts against terrorism and drugs, and jeopardizes trade, economy, and energy supplies.”
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Iraq and the United States also held the first round of talks Saturday regarding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, according to the prime minister’s office.
But Iran’s “Axis of Resistance is demonstrating its readiness to sustain and even further escalate its attack campaign, despite the United States and Iraqi federal government announcing that they will negotiate over the status of U.S. forces in Iraq,” the Institute for the Study of War said in a research note Sunday.
About 350 troops are stationed at the base that was targeted Sunday. A U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the incident said the drone struck the living quarters of the base and caused injuries that ranged from cuts and bruises to brain trauma.
Eight personnel were evacuated out of Jordan “for higher level care, but they are in stable condition,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
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[1] Url:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/29/us-strike-jordan-drone-attack/
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