“We will bring all the culprits”: the global consequences of US revenge on Iran after the drone attack are named

US retaliation for the drone attack could lead to an “uncontrollable escalation” of the Middle East crisis, analysts warn. Any direct attack on Iran could provoke retaliatory Iranian missile attacks on US assets in the region or on US allies such as Israel.

The killing of three US soldiers and the wounding of dozens more in a drone attack in Jordan creates almost certainty that the United States will retaliate with military force, says Deborah Haynes, security and defense editor at Sky News.

The more difficult question is whether this response will be limited to the “radical Iranian-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq” that the White House has blamed for the carnage, or expanded to include the regime in Tehran that supports them. or both.

Joe Biden must respond decisively to contain future threats to the large number of US military forces operating throughout the region. But this external crisis is also affecting domestic politics, Sky News notes.

The current American president’s Democratic predecessor and main rival, Republican Donald Trump, who is vying to take him on in this year’s election, has already used a drone attack to accuse Joe Biden of weakness.

What is certain is that the deadly drone strike late last week on US soldiers stationed in Jordan is a significant escalation in a region that has been threatening to explode since the Hamas militant group, also backed by Iran, attacked Israel on October 7, triggering Israel’s war in Gaze, Sky News notes.

Given the fact that American soldiers have died, there is perhaps a greater risk of sparking a wider conflict than even the decision by the United States and Britain earlier this month to launch airstrikes against Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

Joe Biden said the facts were still being gathered, but “we know this was carried out by radical Iranian-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”

The American president added: “Rest assured, we will bring all those responsible to justice at a time and in a manner that we choose.”

The last time tensions between the United States and Iran were this high was in 2019, when Donald Trump was in power and decided to terminate the nuclear deal with Tehran, Sky News recalls.

At one point, the then US president even said that the US military was already “cocked and loaded” to launch a direct strike on Iran in retaliation for the downing of a US surveillance drone.

That strike was called off because President Trump said he believed such a response would have resulted in Iranian deaths and would have been disproportionate given that there were no personnel on board the aircraft that attacked Iran.

A drone strike on US troops near Jordan’s north-eastern border with Syria is very different, although it creates a similar dilemma, Sky News notes.

Since the attack was said to have been carried out by pro-Iranian proxies rather than Tehran directly, it would be more difficult to justify a direct strike on Mran unless there was clear evidence of an Iranian bias in what happened.

Also an important factor in any US calculations will be the need to continue to try to contain violence in the region, which is already in danger of developing into an uncontrollable escalation, Sky News states.

Any direct attack on Iran could provoke retaliatory Iranian missile attacks on US assets in the region or on US allies such as Israel.

Many Gulf states will also be incredibly nervous as they too will potentially find themselves in Iran’s line of fire.

In contrast, a decision to target only Iranian-backed groups accused of carrying out the strike would likely require a much broader use of force than has occurred in the past.

The US has carried out repeated airstrikes against Iran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria in response to attacks on its troops in both countries. But so far these actions have clearly failed to contain the threat, Sky News notes.