Jordan drone strike: US approves plans for strikes on Iran and Syria after deadly attack

Iran threatened earlier this week to “decisively respond” to any American attack on the Islamic Republic after President Biden explicitly linked Tehran to the killing of three US soldiers in a drone attack on its Tower 22 base in northeastern Jordan.

The Iranian warnings first came from Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, who said simply: “The Islamic Republic would decisively respond to any attack on the county, its interests and nationals under any pretexts.”

The president and first lady are in Delaware to honour the three American servicemembers killed in last Sunday’s drone attack in Jordan as their remains are returned home to their families.

The US has bolstered defences at the base in Jordan that was attacked by Iran-backed militants as it prepares for a wider response to a drone attack that killed three of its service members, an American official said Friday.

Even as a larger US military response seemed imminent, some Iran-backed factions pledged to continue to attack its forces in the region. In a statement released on Friday, one of Iraq’s strongest Iran-backed militias, Harakat al-Nujaba, announced its plans to continue military operations against American troops, despite other allied factions having called off their attacks in the wake of Sunday’s drone strike in Jordan.

While previous US responses have been more limited, the attack on Tower 22, as the Jordan outpost is known, and the deaths of the three service members has crossed a line, the official said.

The base was struck by an Iranian-made drone fired from Iraq, they said.In the days since the attack, the US has bolstered the defences around Tower 22, which houses about 350 troops and sits near the demilitarised zone on the border between Jordan and Syria. The Iraqi border is only six miles away.

President Biden has a wide array of options at his disposal but the US must walk a fine line.

A weak response to Sunday’s tragedy will do little to deter further attacks by Iran-backed militia groups on its forces.

A major assault, however, risks expanding the turmoil in the Middle East and drawing America into a much wider conflict.

The deadly drone strike on the US military base in Jordan has left President Biden with a difficult decision about how to respond.

Concerns have been growing over the spread of violence across the Middle East, linked to Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

That conflict was triggered by an attack by Hamas inside Israel in which around 1,200 people were killed and another 240 taken hostage.

Hamas is allied to Iran and other Tehran-supported groups have launched strikes and linked it to the situation in Gaza, where health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory say more than 26,000 people have been killed.

Sunday’s drone strike was the most serious of more than 160 aerial assaults by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and now Jordan on US forces across the region since October.

Tom Watling has this report.

President Biden and first lady Dr Jill Biden will join grieving families at Dover Air Force Base on Friday to honour the three American servicemembers killed in last Sunday’s drone attack in Jordan, a solemn ritual that has become relatively uncommon in recent years as the US withdrew from conflicts abroad.

The Bidens will attend a “dignified transfer” as the remains of the troops killed in the assault return to US soil.

Defence secretary Lloyd Austin will also join the Bidens for the transfer in Dover, where such events take place whenever US soldiers are killed in action.

The service members killed were all from the state of Georgia — Sgt William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Sgt Kennedy Sanders of Waycross and Sgt Breonna Moffett of Savannah.

Sanders and Moffett were posthumously promoted to sergeant rank.

US forces struck a Houthi drone base in Yemen in the early hours of Thursday morning after determining it presented an “imminent threat” to merchant and navy vessels in the region.

The Pentagon said in a statement that it had conducted strikes “against an Iranian-backed Houthi UAV ground control station and 10 Houthi one-way UAVs” at around 1.30am local time.

The strikes represent the latest in a series of US military actions against the Yemeni rebel group, which were launched in response to its attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have repeatedly attacked merchant and US navy ships in the region since November in retaliation for Israel’s war in Gaza, which is backed by the US.

The group’s spokesman said the attacks on vessels in one of the world’s busiest shipping routes would continue “until the aggression is stopped, and the siege is lifted on the people of Palestine in the Gaza Strip.”

The US is said to have approved plans to strike Iranian personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria in response to a drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan on Sunday.

US officials have characterised the response as a “campaign” that could last “weeks,” and will include both airstrikes and cyber attacks, according to NBC. It would target both the Iran-backed militias that carried out the deadly attack, and Iranian forces that support them in the region, officials told ABC separately.

The decision to attack Iranian personnel directly in Iraq and Syria marks a significant escalation in a volatile regional power struggle that pits the US against Iran and a network of allied militias in the Middle East.

US forces in the region have come under frequent attacks by Iran-backed militias opposed to the US presence in the region for years, but those attacks increased dramatically following Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and Washington’s unyielding support for the war.

The vessel left Australia on 5 January for Israel but was diverted in the middle of the month due to threats of attack by Yemen’s Houthi militia and forced to turn back.

The 16,000 sheep and 2,000 cattle are now in limbo before the decision is made to offload them in Australia or export them via a longer route around Africa to Israel. Farm and exporter groups say the animals on board the MV Bahijah are in good health but MPs have slammed the situation.

Josh Wilson, a member of parliament for Fremantle, where the ship was loaded, said the animals’ ordeal showed the live export trade was “rotten to its core”.

“What is being contemplated is a 60-day voyage for 14,000 sheep on a stinking hot and literally stinking metal vessel,” he told 10 News.

Israel is a key export market for Australia’s agriculture industry, with 86,100 sheep worth $6.5million and 10,848 cattle worth $14million traded in the first three months of 2023.