Deadly attack may leave Biden no choice but to take fight to Tehran
The latest attack on US forces by an Iranian-backed militia demonstrates that Tehran has lost none of its appetite for seeking to escalate tensions in the Middle East, while at the same time trying to avoid a direct confrontation with Washington.
Ever since Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists launched their assault against Israel on Oct 7, Tehran has been quietly working to open a series of new fronts in the region.
Attacks launched against northern Israel by Hezbollah, the terrorist organisation Iran has supported in southern Lebanon for four decades, have resulted in many Israeli towns in the area being left deserted as Israelis seek refuge elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have been conducting regular attacks against US bases, while Houthi rebels in Yemen, who also enjoy Tehran’s backing, have caused major disruption to shipping in the Red Sea with their constant attacks on international merchant shipping.
The latest attack against a military base in northern Jordan by an Iranianbacked militia, in which three US personnel were killed and another 34 injured, takes Iran’s attempts to escalate the conflict to a new level.
While Iran’s official position, as articulated by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7, is that it has no intention of becoming directly involved in a conflict with the US, its continuing support for the so-called “axis of resistance” – consisting of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – indicates otherwise.
Certainly, no one in Washington is in any doubt that Iran is directly responsible for encouraging its proxies to maintain their attacks against the US and its allies in the region. This has prompted Donald Trump, the former president, to warn that the world is on the “brink of World War Three”, while leading Republicans, such as Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator, are calling for “a clear, lethal and overwhelming response”.
The killing of US service personnel serving in the Middle East clearly raises the stakes for Joe Biden, the president, who has so far confined Washington’s response to attacking Iranian proxies, such as the Houthis.
But with Mr Biden himself vowing to retaliate “at a time and in a manner of our choosing”, there is a very real prospect that the US might feel obliged to attack Iranian military targets deemed to be involved in supporting Iran’s network of terrorist militias. In the immediate aftermath of the killing of the US servicemen, Pentagon sources made it clear that retaliatory strikes against Iran were a distinct possibility, which could result in a major conflict with Tehran.
At the very least, the attack on the base, which is used to monitor the operations of Iranian-backed groups in neighbouring Syria, as well as remnants of the Islamic State terrorist network, could persuade the Biden administration to rethink its military commitments in the region.
Recent reports in the US have suggested that Washington has been involved in talks to withdraw its remaining forces from Iraq and Syria.
But with Iran clearly intent on persisting with its proxy war against the US in the Middle East, the Biden administration might now conclude that maintaining a significant military presence in the region is the best way of containing the threat posed by Iran, as well as its terrorist network.
Maintaining a permanent US military presence in the region will become even more of an imperative if Iran continues with its provocative acts to a point where the US and its allies have no option but to take the fight directly to Tehran’s doorstep.
‘No one in Washington is in any doubt that Iran is encouraging its proxies to maintain their attacks’ ‘The killing of US service personnel in the Middle East clearly raises the stakes for Biden’