The president of the United States and commander in chief of its Armed Forces, Joe Biden, has already decided how he will respond to the drone attack that killed three reservists at a US base in Jordan on Sunday. He announced this in a brief statement to the media from the White House, minutes before boarding Air Force One to head to two campaign events in Florida. "We do not need a regional war in the Middle East. It is not what we are looking for," he assured, without going into details about the form that retaliation will take for the first three American victims in the region since the war in Gaza escalated, the October 7.
The attack, which was not intercepted by anti-aircraft defenses due to the confusion of the enemy drone with one of its own that was returning to the base, left three dead and more than forty injured, the Pentagon confirmed today. It occurred at Tower 22, a US outpost located on the border between Jordan, Syria and Iraq, intended primarily to support the anti-terrorist coalition against the Islamic State, the Central Command explained in a statement. And it was claimed by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a group of Shiite militias, including Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, among other groups supported by Iran.
It is the first fatal attack of the more than 160 that US targets have suffered in the region, according to Pentagon data. All of them, carried out by militias close to Tehran, such as the Houthis in the Red Sea, where they have generated significant disruptions in maritime trade. Although Ali Khamenei's regime has denied any involvement in the aggression, stating that the militias "act based on their own principles" and "do not take orders" from Iran, the US considers the Persian regime the main culprit. : "I hold them responsible because they are supplying weapons to the attackers," Biden confirmed this Tuesday.
More than two days have passed since the attack and there is still no response. Pressed on this issue - by the Republican opposition and by the American press - the spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, has reiterated the official message: "we will respond at the time and in the manner of our choosing." And he has gone into more detail than the president: "It is very likely that it will be a staggered approach. Not a single action, but potentially multiple and sustained over time." The "guiding principle" of retaliation will be to "ensure that we continue to degrade the capabilities that these groups have at their disposal to use against our troops and facilities, and send a clear signal to Iran's supporters: these attacks are unacceptable."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted Monday that this is "an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East," at a news conference in Washington alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. "We have not seen a situation as dangerous as the current one in the region since 1973," he said, referring to the Yom Kippur War, which pitted Israel against its neighboring Arab countries and caused some 2,600 victims in just 19 days. . "We want to prevent this conflict from spreading. So we have two objectives: defend our people when they are attacked and, at the same time, work to prevent the conflict from spreading," he added.
After decades immersed in the Middle East, with the wear and tear that this implies, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States began to withdraw a large part of the military, logistical and intelligence resources that it had installed in the region. He did so with the conviction that Russia and China posed much greater threats, under the strategy known as Pivot to Asia. However, recent events are forcing the country to refocus its efforts on the Middle East.
Over the past decade, the CIA has shut down its training program for the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group that formed in 2011 to fight President Bashar al-Assad; the Pentagon has withdrawn thousands of troops in Iraq and all of them in Afghanistan; and Washington has ended its support for Saudi-led operations in Yemen. Although economic and military assistance to Israel, the world's largest recipient of American aid since World War II, has continued to increase, now reaching $297 billion over eight decades.
With the electoral horizon of presidential elections in November, the retaliation that the US takes in the coming hours or days will receive greater scrutiny from the opposition, the media and the electorate. Voters are increasingly reticent about aid to Ukraine and the Biden administration's role in the Middle East: 60% believe they are supporting Israel "too much" or "too little," according to a recent Gallup poll.
Republicans hold the president directly responsible for the more than 160 attacks received in the region in the last three months, to which the administration has responded so far with limited and precision attacks. The death of three American reservists is the "tragic consequence of Biden's weakness and surrender," said his probable rival in the November elections, Donald Trump. The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, expressed himself along the same lines. : "We cannot allow ourselves to continue responding to this aggression with half measures. The entire world is waiting for signs that the president is finally willing to exert US force to force Iran to change its behavior. "Our enemies are emboldened."
