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President Biden insists he doesn’t want a war with Iran.
The reality is that America may already be in one.
Top administration officials on Monday vowed to retaliate against the Iran-backed Shiite militias thought to be responsible for a weekend drone attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens more.
It was just the latest in a long line of attacks — more than 150, by most counts — by Iran-linked groups on American and allied personnel and interests in the Middle East since Oct. 7, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a terrorist assault on Israel. Hamas is also financially and logistically supported by Iran, although Tehran denies it knew in advance of the Oct. 7 rampage.
Those same U.S. officials reiterated that the U.S. doesn’t want “escalation” or a direct war with Iran, signaling that the administration is once again eyeing the kind of proportional retaliatory strike that hasn’t slowed the numerous militia and rebel groups tied directly to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
SEE ALSO: Biden faces pressure to respond after drone attack kills U.S. troops in Jordan
Mr. Biden met Monday with his aides, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, to discuss options. As Mr. Biden seeks to avoid escalation, the conflict is escalating all around him. The most recent attack means that U.S. forces are now clashing with Iranian proxies in at least four countries: Iraq, Syria, Yemen and now Jordan. Meanwhile, ally Israel is engaged in a low-boil war with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon.
Kataib Hezbollah and other IRGC-linked Shiite militias have regularly targeted American forces with drones and rockets in Iraq and Syria, leading to sharp debates about the future of American deployments in both countries.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched dozens of attacks on commercial ships and U.S. military personnel in the Red Sea over the past three months. Two Navy SEALs disappeared at sea this month while boarding a ship loaded with Iranian-made weapons and destined for Houthi depots in Yemen, Pentagon officials said.
Now the conflict has reached into Jordan, a longtime partner of Washington where the U.S. keeps a small detachment of troops near the Syrian border as part of the ongoing mission to defeat the Islamic State terrorist network. U.S. officials said the enemy drone was able to pierce the defenses at the small installation known as Tower 22. The drone was mistakenly thought to be an American drone returning to the base, officials told The Associated Press, sparking confusion and allowing the enemy craft to slip by.
As the Pentagon sorts through those details, analysts warn about much bigger, more consequential issues. For starters, they say it’s long past time to acknowledge the obvious: Iran is at war with the U.S.
“Iran is in a war against us, and it will only get worse the longer Iran and the militias they back are convinced they face no meaningful consequence for their actions,” said Michael Rubin, a former Defense Department official and now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“Iran feels they can quite literally get away with murder,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times. “Mark my words: If we do not draw a red line now and respond, Iranian-backed groups will next strike via terror proxies at Americans at home.”
Such stark warnings may sound over the top, but Mr. Rubin and other foreign policy specialists have been warning for months, if not years, that U.S. troops will inevitably die if the administration does not take a harder line against Tehran and its proxies. Those predictions proved true with the American deaths in Jordan.
Even less hawkish voices in Washington suggest the weekend’s events put a new onus on Mr. Biden to respond effectively.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to come to a point where now direct strikes on Iran are what is required to quell this activity,” retired Adm. John Miller, former commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet in the Persian Gulf, told the website Foreign Policy.com. “In true Iranian fashion, they’re going to push and push and push, until they sense that they’ve come to a red line. … They need to be held to account for that.”
Critics say the roots of the current crisis are complex. President Trump repudiated the multilateral Iran nuclear deal and reimposed harsh economic sanctions on Tehran in 2018. Iran responded by ramping up its nuclear programs and its conventional military forces.
Mr. Biden came to office talking of reengagement with Iran’s theocratic leader, dropping the Trump-era “maximum pressure” policy and seeking to open another round of diplomacy. The effort to strike a new deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program failed, and the tensions set off by the Hamas-Israel conflict have revived simmering animosity and clashing interests dividing Washington and Tehran.
Red lines
High-profile Republicans, many long critical of the diplomatic outreach to Iran, are now amplifying the calls for a tougher stance. Some are even openly advocating strikes against Iran, while others want to see a slate of immediate hardball actions.
“Weakness is provocative, and the Biden administration’s weak policies have produced this dangerous situation,” Sen. James E. Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Monday. “The administration must adopt an Iran policy focused on imposing meaningful economic and military costs on the regime, rather than continuing feeble efforts to do the bare minimum and hope the regime changes course.
“We must permanently freeze funds, enforce oil sanctions and restore credible deterrence,” he added. “Americans at home and our troops in the field deserve an Iran policy that protects them and U.S. interests. Inaction only serves to fuel Iran and its proxies further.”
The U.S. seems virtually certain to strike back soon against the Iran-backed militias. Mr. Biden, in the past, has ordered numerous strikes against those militias in Iraq and Syria.
After intense criticism, Mr. Biden this month ordered airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. Such strikes by American and British warplanes have continued regularly over the past several weeks, targeting Houthi anti-ship missile facilities, drone storage depots and other sites.
Strikes on Iran would be a much different matter. They would represent a significant step that could draw the U.S. into a prolonged war in the region — exactly the kind of conflict Mr. Biden and his predecessor, Mr. Trump, sought to avoid. The administration has consistently tried to distance its military recent strikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen from the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, stressing that the U.S. will do everything in its power to stop a broader war.
Some voices in Washington warn the White House against overreacting to the weekend’s events.
The U.S. “should consider its next moves from a strategic perspective and not purely a reactive one,” Middle East Institute President Paul Salem wrote in a commentary Monday. “The U.S.’s and the region’s security and stability interests are best served by doubling down on the diplomacy that has reportedly brought Israel and Hamas very close to a prisoner exchange and a two-month cease-fire.”
Iran denied Sunday that it played any role in the Jordan attacks, and the U.S. and Iran say publicly they are not seeking a war.
“There is a conflict between U.S. forces and resistance groups in the region, which [carry out] reciprocate retaliatory attacks,” Iran’s U.N. mission in New York said in a statement, insisting Tehran had “nothing to do with” the deadly drone strike.
By taking such a restrained, cautious approach, the administration has struggled to deal a meaningful blow to any of the Iran-linked groups operating in an increasingly dangerous, chaotic theater.
Even Monday, just hours after the deaths of American service members in Jordan, avoiding escalation remained a top priority.
“We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate, but we will absolutely do what is required to protect yourselves, to continue that mission and respond appropriately to these attacks,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House.
Mr. Kirby said the president was “working through his options” on how and when to respond.
Other officials made clear that retaliation is on the horizon.
“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops,” Mr. Austin said.
The next several days represent a crucial test for Mr. Biden, some specialists say, as it is now crystal clear that Iran and its proxies will keep upping the ante until they are stopped.
“Tehran must wonder: Is killing American soldiers a red line? The president is now on the clock to deliver an answer,” Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank and a former NSC official, wrote in a piece for the New York Post on Monday.
“How many more Americans must die before the commander in chief stops appeasing the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism?” Mr. Goldberg asked.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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