The White House on Monday vowed a "very consequential response" to a drone strike on a base in Jordan that killed three of its soldiers but is not seeking war with Iran, a senior official said following the blame pointed at Iran-backed groups by U.S. President Joe Biden.
The casualties – the first U.S. military deaths in the region since Israel launched an indiscriminate war on Gaza in retaliation to the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion – raised fears of an escalating conflict.
"We are not looking for a war with Iran," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters, adding however that the attack "was escalatory, make no mistake about it, and it requires a response."
Biden said on Sunday that Washington was still gathering the facts on the attack, which he blamed on Iran-backed groups.
Iran said it had nothing to do with the attack and denied U.S. accusations it supported groups behind the Sunday strike on the remote frontier base in Jordan's northeast, near the borders with Iraq and Syria.
"Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S. base," Iran's mission to the United Nations said in a statement published by the state news agency IRNA on Monday.
The U.S. media reported Monday, citing unnamed military officials, that the failure to prevent the strike was possibly due to confusion over whether the drone was hostile or a U.S. device returning to base.
Kirby earlier told CNN that the U.S. response would be "very consequential," but would not speculate on the options Biden was considering, including whether targets inside Iran were on the table.
American and allied forces were targeted in the region again on Monday, this time by rockets in Syria, though no injuries were reported, a U.S. defense official said.
U.S. and coalition troops have been attacked at least 165 times since mid-October – 66 in Iraq, 98 in Syria and one in Jordan – with "a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles," the Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted the official as saying.
Britain has also blamed "Iran-aligned" militants for the Jordan attack – accusations that Iran's foreign ministry has rejected as "baseless."
There has so far been no claim of responsibility for Sunday's strike, although the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed the same day to have launched three drone attacks at bases in Syria, including near the Jordanian border.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday vowed that the United States would take "all necessary actions" to defend its troops after the drone attack.
"Let me start with my outrage and sorrow (for) the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded," Austin said at the Pentagon.
"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," Austin added at the start of a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the Pentagon.
The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said late Sunday the attack had hit the remote Tower 22 logistics support base and that 34 personnel were also wounded.
The escalating Middle East conflict poses a challenge to Biden in an election year, and Republican politicians were quick to take aim at him over the weekend.
A spokesperson for Hamas has earlier said the Jordan attack was a message that the fighting in Gaza "risks a regional explosion."
Fear over wider conflict looms following Oct. 7 incursion of Hamas which Israeli officials said left some 1,200 killed while subsequent indiscriminate attacks on Gaza have left at least 26,637 people in Gaza killed, most of them women and children, according to the territory's Health Ministry.
The United States and Britain have both carried out strikes targeting Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who have been attacking Red Sea shipping in support of Palestinians in Gaza for more than two months.
