It was inevitable that at some point, drone and missile attacks on US bases by Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East would lead to the death of American troops. This happened on Sunday, when three US soldiers were killed and 34 wounded in a drone attack on a US base named T-22 in north-eastern Jordan close to the border with Syria.
President Joe Biden has blamed Iran and promised retaliation, further escalating the confrontation between the US, UK, Israel and their allies on the one hand, and Iran and its allies on the other.
It is highly unlikely to have a deterrent effect on Iran, but it is evidence of the extent to which the US is now mired in an escalating crisis in the Middle East with few practical plans to bring it to a conclusion. The 3,000 US troops based in Jordan, 2,500 in Iraq, and 900 in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria have been subjected to harassing attacks since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, but without suffering loss of life. The Iranians could probably make these attacks more lethal if they wanted to, but the speed with which they disclaimed responsibility for the T-22 strike suggests they do not.
The Biden Administration has pretended there is no direct causal link between the Israeli assault on Gaza, where 26,000 Palestinians have died, and the targeting of US and Western interests in the region. But these are unlikely to stop until a lasting ceasefire is in place in Gaza. There is no sign of this, and discussions between top officials from the US, Israel, Qatar, Egypt and other states in Paris have yet to produce a feasible short- or long-term plan to bring the fighting and destruction to an end.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has little incentive to stop the war, which will almost certainly be followed by his fall from power in Israel, where he is widely blamed for the Hamas surprise attack on 7 October that killed 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages. He leads an extreme right-wing government, some of whose senior members favour expanding the assault on the 2.4 million population of Gaza to the three million Palestinians on the West Bank.
Despite the appalling death toll, Israel has as yet failed to translate its military dominance into political achievements, notably the elimination of Hamas. On the contrary, it remains a significant military force and opinion polls show that support for it and armed resistance in general has increased among Palestinians.
The great mystery of the war so far is why the US has not made greater and more effective efforts to bring it to an end. This it could certainly do, given Israel’s reliance on US military and diplomatic support. Ever since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower forced an Israeli retreat from captured Egyptian territory, it has always been the US that has negotiated an end to Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinians military conflicts. This time round it has failed to do so, hurting Biden’s political prospects at home and damaging the US internationally.
The US and Israel have hitherto calculated that Iran does not want an all-out war over Gaza, since it is militarily outmatched and traditionally prefers complicated, drawn out conflicts in which it can fight indirectly using local proxies and allies. The Gaza crisis has so far played to its advantage because Tehran is the main advocate of the Palestinian cause which is back at the top of the international agenda.
At the same time, however, the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance to Israel and the US has failed to do much effectively for the Palestinians.
Iran can put pressure on the US in countries where it is allied to, or largely controls, forces drawn from the Shia communities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. But there is the risk that harassment will spin out of control, inflicting more US casualties than had been intended. This may have happened in Jordan on Sunday, but such an incident was inevitable at some point.
Biden is under growing pressure from Republicans to retaliate strongly against Iran. “The entire world now watches for signs that the President is finally prepared to exercise American strength to compel Iran to change its behaviour,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate.
“Hit Iran now. Hit them hard,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
In private, Republicans may be gleefully aware that there is not a lot Biden can do to intimidate Iran, although his failure to do so will be politically costly for him. At home, he can be portrayed as feeble by Republicans and a warmonger by progressive Democrats. In the Arab and Muslim world, the US will be seen as complicit in war crimes.
Proposals for ending the war being discussed in Paris by the US, Israel, Qatar and Egypt, as reported by the New York Times, sound like wishful thinking. They include the release of the remaining Israeli hostages over 60 days and the departure of the Hamas leadership from Gaza in return for the withdrawal of most or all of Israeli troops and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas would be replaced by a Palestinian Authority remodelled to be acceptable to the US and Israel, but Hamas, its popularity much enhanced by the war, will not concede defeat. Biden has no good options.
