It was sure to happen that American troops in the Mideast would be killed by assaults from Iranian terror proxies and now it’s happened, with three U.S. Army soldiers slain and dozens wounded Saturday night in Jordan. Since Iran proxy Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, the mullahs’ terror bands in the region have been busy firing at our forces and our allies.
America will respond, as President Joe Biden said, “at a time and in a manner of our choosing” so Iran and its satraps learn that the United States does not turn the cheek when we are the subject of an act of war.
The 900 Americans serving in Syria have been targeted by 96 attacks on their bases, while the 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq have been hit 63 times. But those 159 attacks by pro-Iran terrorists caused little to no damage. That changed Saturday, when a drone struck hard on a barracks at an outpost called Tower 22, in Jordan, right near the triple border of where the U.S.-allied kingdom (home to about 3,000 American troops) meets Syria and Iraq in the barren wastes of the Syrian Desert.
The culprits are the Islamic Resistance in Iraq or Kata’ib Hezbollah or another Iran-backed gang. While not under direct control of Iran, the motivation and inspiration goes back to Tehran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the puppet master.
Like Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis rebels in Yemen, they form what they call the Axis of Resistance, a lovely gathering of terrorists and cutthroats attacking Israel, moderate Arab states and Western interests throughout the region. And at the center of this web are the ayatollahs declaring holy war on the Great Satan (which is us).
The piracy of the Houthis on global shipping in the Red Sea is part of this war, as is Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel while their Hamas comrades do the same from Gaza.
Iran has been careful to not launch these salvos themselves, but have used their loyal agents for their dirty work. Still, their fingerprints are clear, with the Pentagon and the White House highlighting Iran’s involvement in the Jordan attack.
America’s complaint against Iran is that they are the largest supporter of terrorism in the world, exporting murder, as their not-so-shadowy network of killers shows. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, before ISIS set off bombs in the Iranian city of Kerman this month that killed more than 80 people, Washington warned Iran that ISIS was planning an atrocity and passed along intelligence details on the place and time of the bombings.
Terrorism, from Al-Qaeda or ISIS or Hamas or Hezbollah or the Houthis or the myriad groups operating in the chaos of Syria and Iraq, hurts everyone. Iran may think that they can benefit from terror attacks, but the lawless death and destruction spreads. And now retribution will be coming.
As Biden said of those who died in that remote Tower 22 barracks, very far away from their home and families, that they were “unbending in their commitment to our country— risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, and our allies and partners with whom we stand in the fight against terrorism. It is a fight we will not cease.”
—New York Daily News Editorial Board/TNS