Three American service members were killed on Saturday in a drone attack in Jordan, the White House said in a statement. The soldiers were killed near the Syrian border. The US is continuing to gather information about the attack, but the White House has blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups.” The pro-Iranian “Islamic Resistance” in Iraq claimed on January 28 that it had attacked five locations in the region: Erbil in Iraq, as well as Shaddadi, Tanf, and Rukban in Syria. US forces were present in four of these locations.
This is a major escalation in the region and shows that Iran is willing to expand the war into new countries. Iran has already operationalized the Houthis in Yemen to attack ships in the Red Sea. It has also prodded its proxies in Syria and Iraq to carry out more than 150 attacks on US forces. Iran has also pushed Hezbollah to fire more than 2,000 rockets at Israel. Iranian-backed proxies have already become a headache for Jordan because of drug smuggling. Now, it appears they have crossed yet another red line in the region.
Tanf is a US garrison in Syria in a desert area that is near the Jordanian border and also not far from where the Jordan-Syria and Iraq borders meet. The US came to the area during the war on ISIS to support anti-ISIS fighters. Since then, the garrison has become a forlorn area. It has been targeted by drones linked to Iran in the past. Iran and its proxies have now escalated. The Iranian pro-government Tasnim News says that “Islamic Resistance” in Iraq also claimed they had targeted a place called Khirba Adnan in Syria.
This regional escalation constitutes Iranian willingness to expand its wars by proxies
The Iranian Tasnim News mentioned the deaths of three US soldiers in a separate article. Jordan’s Al-Ghad also discussed the attack but did not elaborate. There have been numerous attacks over the last two days by the Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria. This appears to be the sign of a new campaign by Iran against US forces. Pro-Iranian politicians in Iraq, many of them linked to militias, have also called for US forces to leave Iraq.
The pro-Iranian Al-Mayadeen media also carried coverage of other attacks in the region. Hezbollah claimed it had targeted Israel. The Iran-backed Houthis also targeted the HMS Diamond with a drone overnight. Even if all the attacks on the evening of January 27 were not directly coordinated by Iran, it is clear that Iranian proxies carried out drone attacks and other attacks from Yemen and also in Iraq and Syria. This represents a new stage in the Iranian-backed attacks on the US and UK. The attacks began in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.