3 US Army Reserve soldiers were killed in a march attack on an American position in northeastern Jordan (Reuters)
A few hours after the deadly drone attack the day before yesterday, Sunday, by suspected Iranian-backed gunmen on an American military site in Jordan, which led to the death of three American soldiers and the wounding of more than 30 others, a “familiar chorus of hawks” began calling once again for President Joe’s administration. Biden to bomb Iran.
The first of them was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who tweeted on X, saying: “Strike Iran now.” John Cronin, his colleague in the Senate, was more forceful when he tweeted: “Target Tehran.” Meanwhile, Senator Tom Cotton said that anything short of striking Iran directly “will confirm that Joe Biden is a coward who does not deserve to be commander-in-chief.”
In this context, Foreign Policy magazine's national security correspondent, Jack Deitch, pointed out that Iran denied any link or relationship to the attack, noting that the decisions of the so-called "resistance groups" in the region to attack American forces are taken by those groups on their own.
He added that Tehran, however, remains the main supporter of such groups and its Revolutionary Guard maintains close relations with them.
The writer referred to the US President saying: “We went through a difficult day last night in the Middle East, in which we lost 3 brave lives in an attack on one of our bases, and we will respond.”
Deitch wondered how Biden could respond, and concluded with 3 possible ways that he extracted from his dialogue with a group of former officials and experts: It is a strike inside Iran, striking Iranian targets in the region, or continuing diplomacy.
Strikes inside Iran
As for the first option, the writer quoted some former military officials insisting that comprehensive strikes inside Iran itself are the only way to send a message to Tehran to stop this.
John Miller, a retired Navy admiral and former commander of the US 5th Fleet in the Gulf, said the United States should lead strikes inside Iran that weaken the IRGC's economic interests as well as its ability to ship weapons abroad. He added that the United States should impose sanctions that further paralyze Iran's ability to export oil.
President Biden learned of the killing of 3 US Army reservists in a drone attack on an American site in northeastern Jordan (Reuters - The White House)
He commented, "It cannot be just an exchange of blows. If you kill our men, we will respond to you. This does not deter them, especially when dealing with agents, because the Iranians are ready to fight until the last agent."
Strikes against its origins
As for the second option, which is to strike Iranian targets in the region, the writer points out that not everyone believes in the necessity of striking inside Iran so that the United States can rebuild deterrence.
In this, Nathan Sales, the former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism during the Trump administration, said that there is a long track record of the United States urging Iran to curb its provocations by striking its valuable assets in the region.
Sales referred to “Operation Mantis,” a strike campaign launched by the administration of former US President Ronald Reagan in April 1988 on Iranian ships in the Gulf after a guided missile frigate struck a mine planted by Tehran a few days earlier.
Most recently, in January 2020, the American drone raid that killed the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, and the commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, at Baghdad airport was enough to make Iran mostly retreat from its reciprocal campaign against the American forces in Iraq and Syria.
Continue diplomacy
As for the third option; It is to continue diplomacy. The writer mentioned that the Biden administration began its term with a determined diplomatic effort to revive US participation in the Iranian nuclear agreement after then-President Donald Trump left the agreement in 2018.
Now some experts believe that calls for US military retaliation against Tehran risk derailing the Biden administration's efforts to find a diplomatic solution to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas and calm tensions with Iran. They are urging his administration to step back from the deliberate destruction and step toward the negotiating table.
Source: Foreign Policy