WASHINGTON
The US failed to prevent a drone attack on American forces based in northeastern Jordan due to a mix-up in the one-way unmanned aircraft’s identity, a report Monday suggested.
The attack coincided with the return of another American drone to the base, leading to confusion about the enemy drone’s identity, according to the Wall Street Journal newspaper.
An Iraqi group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack on Tower 22, a remote military installation in Jordan near the Syrian and Iraqi borders on Sunday.
Iran has denied any involvement in the attack.
Three US troops were killed and at least 34 others were injured at the facility. The deaths are the first since Iranian-supported militias began targeting US forces with drones and missiles amid Israel’s ongoing war in the besieged Gaza Strip where more than 26,000 people have been killed.
US President Joe Biden has vowed to respond to the drone attack, and US officials told the Journal that Washington is determining which targets it will hit in retaliation, including potential sites within Iran itself. The officials said, however, that an attack within Iran appears less likely.
Biden and his senior officials are seeking to strike a balance between a retaliation that is forceful enough to deter additional attacks on US forces and one that will avoid a wider conflagration in the region that could further draw the US into another Middle East war.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN that the president is “working his way through” the US response “right now.” Kirby said the White House is still seeking to determine which group was responsible for Sunday’s attack.
“I think we have a pretty good sense,” Kirby said. “And we certainly believe that that the group was supported by Kataib Hezbollah, which is one of the main IRGC Revolutionary Guards-core backed groups in Iraq and Syria that have been conducting so many of these attacks on our troops in our facilities.”
“This one had lethal consequences in ways that previous ones didn’t, but that doesn’t mean that the intent of the previous attacks weren’t also lethal, it’s just that we were able to defeat them,” he added.
