President is facing pressure from Republicans after numerous attacks on US bases by Iran’s proxies
The killing of three American soldiers in Jordan and the wounding of dozens more, allegedly by an Iranian-backed group, is a red line that was always likely to be crossed in what is becoming an increasingly dangerous region.
The US had up to this weekend avoided fatalities in more than 150 attacks on its military bases by Iranian proxies since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war after the 7 October attacks, but that luck could not last for ever. The question now is what lies on the far side of that red line.
It is a scenario that has repeatedly been discussed in the Pentagon and the national security council, but decisions in reality depend on the array of circumstances at the time. Biden will now choose from a menu of options and consider the dilemma of how far to go to restore deterrence, while balancing the desire to end the open season on US positions across the Middle East with the avoidance of a head-on American-Iranian war.
A former US commander in the region said the options presented to the president would include “targets in Iran that are linked to production of munitions, for training and equipping Iran’s surrogate forces”.
There has been a chorus of demands from Republican senators and some former US generals since the attack on the Tower 22 base on the Jordan-Syria border for Biden to cut out the middle men and bomb Iran directly.
Wesley Clark, a retired general who was once Nato’s supreme commander in Europe, wrote on X: “The US should stop saying, ‘We don’t want to escalate.’ This invites them to attack us. Stop calling our strikes ‘retaliation’. This is reactive. Take out their capabilities and strike hard at the source: Iran.”
Biden will now be sensitive to accusations of weakness on the world stage as his fight for re-election – almost certainly against Donald Trump – begins in earnest.
