America continued to expressed outrage and vow a response to the deaths of American service members in Jordan following a drone assault it blamed on Iranian-backed militias, whereas Washington and London in a separate transfer stepped up stress on Tehran with a brand new set of coordinated sanctions.
U.S. Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin on January 29 doubled down on earlier vows by President Joe Biden to carry accountable these behind the drone assault, which additionally injured dozens of personnel, a lot of whom are being handled for traumatic mind accidents, based on the Pentagon.
”Let me begin with my outrage and sorrow [for] the deaths of three courageous U.S. troops in Jordan and for the opposite troops who had been wounded,” Austin informed a Pentagon briefing.
”The president and I can’t tolerate assaults on U.S. forces and we are going to take all needed actions to defend the U.S. and our troops.”
Later, White Home national-security spokesman John Kirby informed reporters that ”we aren’t searching for a battle with Iran.”
He added, although, that drone assault ”was escalatory, make no mistake about it, and it requires a response.”
A day earlier, Biden stated U.S. officers had assessed that one in all a number of Iranian-backed teams was accountable for the assault and vowed to reply at a time of Washington’s selecting.
”Whereas we’re nonetheless gathering the information of this assault, we all know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant teams working in Syria and Iraq,” Biden stated.
”We’ll keep on their dedication to battle terrorism. And have little question — we are going to maintain all these accountable to account at a time and in a way of our selecting,” Biden stated in a separate assertion.
Particulars of the assault remained unclear on January 29, however a U.S. official stated the enemy drone might have been confused with a U.S.-launched drone returning to the army web site close to the Syrian border and was due to this fact not shot down.
The official, who requested anonymity, stated preliminary stories point out the enemy drone was flying at a low degree on the similar time a U.S. drone was returning to the bottom, generally known as Tower 22.
Iran on January 29 denied it had any hyperlink with the assault, with the Overseas Ministry in Tehran calling the accusations ”baseless.”
Overseas Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani stated that ”resistance teams” within the area don’t take orders from Tehran, although Western nations accuse the nation of serving to arm, prepare, and fund such teams.
Earlier, Iran’s Everlasting Mission to the United Nations stated, ”Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the assault on the U.S. base.”
Jordan condemned what it referred to as a ”terrorist assault” on a army web site, saying it was cooperating with the US to fortify its border defenses.
The assaults are sure to accentuate political stress in the US on Biden — who’s in an election yr — to retaliate in opposition to Iranian pursuits within the area, probably in Iraq or Syria, analysts say.
Gregory Brew, a historian and an analyst with the geopolitical threat agency Eurasia Group, informed RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that the assault in Jordan represented a ”main escalation — and the U.S. is certain to reply forcefully and promptly.”
”The response is prone to come by way of extra intense U.S. motion in opposition to Iran-backed militias in both Syria or Iraq. It is unclear if this was an intentional escalation by Iran and its allies, however the genie is out of the bottle,” he added.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a vocal critic of Biden, a Democrat, on January 28 stated the ”solely reply to those assaults should be devastating army retaliation in opposition to Iran’s terrorist forces…. Something much less will affirm Joe Biden as a coward.”
Many observers have expressed fears of a widening battle within the Center East after battle broke out in Gaza following the October 7 assault on Israel by Hamas, which has been deemed a terrorist group by the US and the European Union. Not less than 1,200 had been killed in these assaults, resulting in Israel’s retaliatory actions that, based on the Hamas-run Well being Ministry in Gaza, have killed greater than 26,000 Palestinians.
Due to its help for Israel, U.S. forces have been the goal of Islamist teams within the Center East, together with Iranian-backed Huthi rebels based mostly in Yemen and militia teams in Iraq who’re additionally supported by Tehran.
In one other incident that can possible intensify such fears of a wider battle, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — which has in depth contacts inside Syria — stated an Israeli air strike in opposition to an Iranian-linked web site in Damascus killed seven folks, together with fighters of Tehran-backed militias.
The Tasnim information company, which is near Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), attributed the assault to Israel, writing that ”two civilians” had been killed, whereas Syrian state tv stated ”plenty of Iranian advisers” had been killed on the ”Iranian Advisory Heart” in Damascus.
Nonetheless, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, denied the Iranian middle had been focused or that ”any Iranian residents or advisers” had been killed.
In the meantime, the US and Britain introduced a set of coordinated sanctions in opposition to 11 officers with the IRGC for alleged connections to a prison community that has focused international dissidents and Iranian regime opponents for ”quite a few assassinations and kidnapping” on the behest of the Iranian Intelligence and Safety Ministry.
A assertion by the British Overseas Workplace stated the sanctions are designed ”to sort out the home menace posed by the Iranian regime, which seeks to export repression, harassment, and coercion in opposition to journalists and human rights defenders” in Britain, the US, and elsewhere.
British Overseas Secretary David Cameron stated the newest sanctions packages ”exposes the roles of the Iranian officers and gangs concerned in exercise aimed to undermine, silence, and disrupt the democratic freedoms we worth within the U.Ok.”
”The U.Ok. and U.S. have despatched a transparent message: We won’t tolerate this menace,” he added.