quote:

The U.S. failed to stop a deadly attack on an American military outpost in Jordan when the enemy drone approached its target at the same time a U.S. drone was also returning to base, U.S. officials said Monday.

The return of the U.S. drone led to some confusion over whether the incoming drone was friend or foe, officials have concluded so far.

The enemy drone was launched from Iraq by a militia backed by Tehran, U.S. officials said. The outpost, Tower 22, sits in Jordan, near the borders of Iraq and Syria.

An American defense official said on Monday that the U.S. has yet to find evidence that Iran directed the attack, which killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens of others. The drone struck living quarters for the troops, contributing to the high casualties, a U.S. official said.

Sunday’s attack signaled an escalation in hostilities that have been growing since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. President Biden said the U.S. would respond.

The U.S. is weighing strikes against militias in Iraq and Syria, as well as within Iran, the officials said. An attack on Iranian soil seemed like a less likely option, U.S. officials said.

In addition to determining how to respond to the drone attack on Tower 22, the administration is also considering strikes against Houthi targets in response to their attacks on commercial U.S. military ships. On Friday, a U.S. destroyer, the USS Carney, shot down a ballistic missile fired toward it from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen, the Pentagon said, marking the second time the U.S. has announced that the group has targeted one of its military vessels.

The Biden administration has to weigh a response forceful enough to deter Iranian allies from conducting further attacks on U.S. forces and interests while avoiding getting bogged down in another war in the Middle East.

The Reagan administration attacked Iranian ships and offshore oil platforms in clashes with Tehran, but the U.S. military hasn’t previously attacked targets on Iranian territory.

Former officials have said the administration might choose from a variety of options short of striking Iranian territory, such as attacking Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force personnel in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, hitting Iranian ships at sea or conducting a major attack on the Iranian-backed militia group that is assessed to be responsible.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday said the U.S. was still working to establish who was specifically responsible for the attack, but believed the perpetrators were supported by Kataib Hezbollah, which is one of Iran’s main militia allies and is based in Iraq with forces in Syria.

Biden would respond “in a time and manner of his own choosing” and “in a very consequential way,” Kirby said in an interview with CNN.

“We don’t want to see these attacks continue. And we want to make it clear that they’re unacceptable. We also want to make it clear that we’ll do what we have to do to protect our troops, our facilities, our national security interests in the region,” Kirby said. “But we don’t seek a war with Iran. We’re not looking for a wider conflict in the Middle East.”

Iran has denied any link to the drone strike. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani on Monday called any allegations of Iranian involvement “baseless accusations” designed to draw the U.S. back into another war in the Middle East.

“The responsibility for the consequences of provoking allegations against Iran lies with those who bring up such baseless claims,” Kanaani told reporters in Tehran.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of pro-Iranian militias, claimed responsibility for attacks on three U.S. bases in Syria, including Al Tanf, which is close to the attacked outpost near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders.

A Telegram channel close to pro-Iranian militias said Sunday’s attack marked retaliation for a U.S. strike in the south of Baghdad a few days ago, during which two militia members were killed.

The killing of three American service members significantly raises the stakes for the U.S. In an election year, the Biden administration will be under even more pressure to act robustly.

“The breadth of the spectrum of next moves by the U.S. in concert with its allies has widened,” said Andrew Borene, a former senior official at the National Counterterrorism Center and now executive director at Flashpoint, an intelligence firm. “There is risk in not doing enough, and seeing more attacks on U.S. forces and international commercial shipping, and there is also clearly a risk in escalating a conflict with Iran itself.”

For years, Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq have sought to drive out American troops from the Middle East. Since Oct. 7, Iran’s network of armed groups across the region has stepped up attacks on Israeli and American interests, aiming to impose a cost for the war in Gaza.

Even if the U.S. hits back at the militias in Iraq and Syria, the militant groups are likely to continue escalating their campaign against U.S. forces in the region, said Hamdi Malik, an expert studying Shiite militias with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.

“Any change in behavior can only happen as a result of exacting costs on the Iranian regime itself rather than the militias in the region. At the moment they’re very comfortable,” Malik said. “Imagine what they’re thinking. At the moment, they have managed to entangle both their main enemies, the United States and Israel, in a few conflicts in the region.”

Lebanese militia Hezbollah has exchanged hundreds of missiles and rockets with the Israeli military across the border and lost more than 150 fighters in the skirmishes. The Iranian-backed Houthi group in Yemen has attacked vessels in the Red Sea, disrupting global shipping.

Iranian militias in Iraq have also claimed responsibility for recent ballistic missile attacks on the U.S. Al-Asad Airbase that caused minor injuries to American and coalition personnel.

Such attacks have appeared designed to avoid crossing red lines that might prompt direct military retaliation against Tehran itself. As clashes have intensified, however, and Israel has refused demands by Iran and its allies to cease its bombardment of Gaza, Iran and the U.S. have gradually been drawn deeper into the conflict.

The U.S. has responded to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea with airstrikes on Yemeni soil, most recently on Saturday. Two Navy SEALs were lost at sea during an operation to seize a vessel carrying Iranian-made missile parts bound for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Earlier this month, an Israeli airstrike killed five military advisers with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria.

For decades, Iran has provided the financial and military backbone of a network of loyal militias across the Middle East that serves to broaden its military footprint and push back against American and Israeli influence. The groups include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq and Syria, and Palestinian groups such as Hamas.

While funded and armed by Tehran, those groups have domestic agendas of their own and operate with some measure of autonomy, which allows Tehran to distance itself from their actions, and largely avoid any blowback.

During the Iraq war, Iranian-backed militias there killed more than 600 U.S. soldiers, according to the Justice Department, without prompting direct American retaliation on Iranian soil. A 2020 U.S. airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and the architect of its foreign alliance of militias, happened while he was on a trip to Baghdad.

After Sunday’s drone strike, Revolutionary Guard members and Afghan militia fighters under the organization’s command in Syria fled from three locations near the eastern city of Deir Ezzour, fearing potential U.S. strikes, according to Syrian officials and government advisers.

“I don’t expect any strikes in Iran,” an Iranian diplomat said. “But there will be attacks on pro-Iranian militias and that will fuel a cycle of revenge that could spiral out of control.”

Iran-backed militias have carried out more than 160 attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since mid-October.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military returned to operations in areas of northern Gaza, from where it had pulled out most of its troops. Israel urged Palestinians to evacuate from parts of Gaza City and northern Gaza to the central part of the strip. The Israeli military had largely shifted focus to Khan Younis in the south of the enclave, where Israel believes Hamas’s leadership is hiding underground, but Israeli officials said the group was trying to re-establish civilian control with its police force in areas of northern Gaza.

Over the past day, the military said it had killed armed militants in skirmishes and used warplanes to bomb antitank posts, tunnel shafts and observation posts used by Hamas.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
No one is probably going to talk about this, but the fact that two out of the three service members killed in Jordan were women I find to be a disgrace to the nation. A country that sends its daughters to fight and die on a battlefield has lost its way.

quote:

The soldiers who died were Sgt. William Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga., Specialist Kennedy Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga., and Specialist Breonna Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga. All three Army Reserve soldiers were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Ga.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
My guess is that the Iranian drone followed the US drone back to base, to avoid being shot down. Or timed the drone to beat the US drone back to base.

Sounds like the US personnel were not fully observant. I wonder how far apart the drones were? 100 yards, or 1/4 mile? Anything more than that they should have realized something was wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
All the rifles had white tape ? Friendly identification ?

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:
Why in the hell do we have troops in Jordan?