WASHINGTON – After a drone attack in Jordan killed three American soldiers, the Pentagon’s response will likely involve air strikes, sea-launched missiles and raids targeting leadership of the Iran-backed militants who have mounted more than 200 assaults on U.S. troops and commercial shipping across the Middle East, according to current and former officials.
The goal will be to erode the militants’ ability to attack, punish their leadership and beef up defenses in the region to protect the thousands of American forces there, the officials said.
The response could involve operations from Yemen to Iraq where the White House and Pentagon blame Iran for supporting local militias.
American defense leaders haven’t ruled a host of options out after the weekend attack killed Sgt. William Rivers of Willingboro, New Jersey; Spc. Kennedy Sanders of Waycross, Georgia,; and Spc. Breonna Moffett of Savannah, Georgia.
Options for retaliation will run the gamut from diplomacy to a large-scale military operation “and everything in between,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. Mark Quantock, who served as chief of intelligence for U.S. Central Command. “I don’t expect a U.S. large-response, meaning a large-scale ground war,” Quantock said.
“But I do expect Iran and its surrogates will feel the hot sting of American power.” The response will have diplomatic and economic teeth, too, he said.
HOW DID THE SITUATION IN THE REGION REACH A BOILING POINT?
Iran has been one of America’s chief antagonists in the Middle East for decades. Its hardline Islamic leadership seized American hostages in Tehran in 1979 and equipped militants in Iraq in the mid-2000s with sophisticated roadside bombs that killed and maimed hundreds of U.S. troops.
Then-President Donald Trump in January 2020 ordered a drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Quds Force, part of the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iraq retaliated with a ballistic missile attack on al-Asad air base in western Iraq where more than 100 U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries.
Those tensions spiked on Sunday, when the Biden administration said it believes the IRGC supplied arms and training to the militias that claimed credit for the attack on Tower 22 that killed the three soldiers and wounded more than 40 others.
