{"id":94155,"date":"2024-01-28T22:12:58","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T22:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.estaql.com\/us-retaliation-over-drone-attack-could-lead-to-uncontrolled-escalation-in-middle-east-crisis-world-news\/"},"modified":"2024-01-28T22:12:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T22:12:58","slug":"us-retaliation-over-drone-attack-could-lead-to-uncontrolled-escalation-in-middle-east-crisis-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/us-retaliation-over-drone-attack-could-lead-to-uncontrolled-escalation-in-middle-east-crisis-world-news\/","title":{"rendered":"US retaliation over drone attack could lead to ‘uncontrolled escalation’ in Middle East crisis | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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US retaliation over drone attack could lead to ‘uncontrolled escalation’ in Middle East crisis | World News<\/h2>\n

US retaliation over drone attack could lead to ‘uncontrolled escalation’ in Middle East crisis | World News<\/p>\n

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The killing of three US soldiers and the injuring of dozens more in a drone attack creates one near-certainty – the United States will retaliate with military force.<\/p>\n

The harder question is whether this response will be contained to the “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq” that the White House has accused of carrying out the carnage, or widened to include the regime in Tehran that supports them – or both.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden<\/strong> must respond forcefully to deter future threats against the large numbers of US forces operating across the region<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But this foreign crisis is playing into domestic politics<\/strong> as well.<\/p>\n

Follow live: Biden blames ‘radical Iran-backed militant groups’ for drone attack<\/strong><\/p>\n

The president’s predecessor and arch-rival, Donald Trump – vying to replace him in this year’s election – has already used the drone attack to accuse Mr Biden of being weak.<\/p>\n

Be in no doubt: the drone strike on Saturday night is a significant escalation in a region that has been threatening to explode ever since the militant group Hamas, also backed by Iran, attacked Israel on 7 October, triggering the Israeli war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Given the fact that US soldiers have died, there is arguably a greater risk of igniting a wider conflict than even the decision by the United States and the UK earlier in the month to launch airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen.<\/p>\n

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In a statement, Mr Biden mourned the loss and wounding of the soldiers.<\/p>\n

He said facts are still being gathered but “we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq”.<\/p>\n

The commander in chief added: “Have no doubt – we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing.”<\/p>\n

The last time tensions between the United States and Iran were this high was in 2019 when Mr Trump was in power and chose to unravel a nuclear deal with Tehran.<\/p>\n

At one point, the then president even said the US military had been “cocked and loaded” for a direct strike against Iran in retaliation to the downing of an American surveillance drone.<\/p>\n

That strike was called off because Mr Trump said he had felt such a response would have resulted in the deaths of Iranians and that would not have been proportionate given the aircraft that Iran had attacked did not have any personnel on board.<\/p>\n

Read more:
US troop deaths pose major problem for Biden – both at home and abroad<\/strong>
UK-US strikes against Houthis were a gamble – but appear to be backfiring
Are we heading for World War Three? Experts give their verdicts<\/strong><\/p>\n

The drone strike against US forces close to Jordan’s northeast border with Syria is very different, though it creates a similar dilemma.<\/p>\n

As the attack was allegedly carried out by Iranian proxies rather than Iran directly, it would be harder to justify a direct strike against Tehran unless there is clear evidence of Iranian direction in what happened.<\/p>\n

Also weighing into any US calculations will be the need to continue to try to contain the violence in the region – already in danger of intensifying into uncontrolled escalation.<\/p>\n

Any direct attack on Iran could trigger retaliatory Iranian missile strikes against US targets in the region or against American allies such as Israel.<\/p>\n

Many Gulf states will also be incredibly nervous as they too would potentially be in the Iranian firing line.<\/p>\n

By contrast, a decision only to go after the Iranian-backed groups accused of carrying out the strike would probably need to involve a much larger use of force than has happened in the past.<\/p>\n

The US has launched airstrikes against Iranian-backed militants in Iraq and Syria on multiple occasions in response to attacks on its troops in both countries.<\/p>\n

But this action has clearly failed to deter the threat so far.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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US retaliation over drone attack could lead to ‘uncontrolled escalation’ in Middle East crisis | World News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US retaliation over drone attack could lead to ‘uncontrolled escalation’ in Middle East crisis | World News US retaliation over drone attack could lead to ‘uncontrolled escalation’ in Middle East crisis | World News The killing of three US soldiers and the injuring of dozens more in a drone attack creates one near-certainty – the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7711],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7711"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}