The United States has released the names of the three American soldiers killed by a drone strike in Jordan that Washington has blamed on Iranian-backed forces and vowed to respond to the attack, which the Pentagon said carried the "footprints" of the Tehran-sponsored Kataib Hizballah militia.
The youngest of the three U.S. troops killed in the attack was 23-year-old Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, the Pentagon said, naming the other two as Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 46.*
SEE ALSO: Biden Weighing Options Amid Mounting Pressure To Hit IranU.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on January 29 doubled down on earlier vows by President Joe Biden to hold responsible those behind the drone attack, which also injured dozens of personnel, many of whom are being treated for traumatic brain injuries, according to the Pentagon.
"Let me start with my outrage and sorrow [for] the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded," Austin told a Pentagon briefing. "The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops."
Later, White House national-security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that “we are not looking for a war with Iran." He added, though, that the drone attack "was escalatory, make no mistake about it, and it requires a response."
During a briefing on January 29, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the latest attack carried the "footprints" of the Iran-backed Kataib Hizballah, which is one of the elite Iraqi armed factions with close ties to Iran.
Experts say Kataib Hizballah is the most powerful group of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella alliance of hard-line Shi'ite militias that have claimed more than 150 attacks on U.S. forces since the Gaza war began.
A day earlier, Biden said U.S. officials had assessed that one of several Iran-backed groups was responsible for the attack and vowed to respond at a time of Washington’s choosing.
"While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq," Biden said.
Details of the attack remained unclear, but a U.S. official said the enemy drone may have been confused with a U.S.-launched drone returning to the military site near the Syrian border and was therefore not shot down.
The official, who requested anonymity, said preliminary reports indicate the enemy drone was flying at a low level at the same time a U.S. drone was returning to the base, known as Tower 22.
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows the military base known as Tower 22 in northeastern Jordan.
Iran on January 29 denied it had any link with the attack, with the Foreign Ministry in Tehran calling the accusations "baseless."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said that "resistance groups" in the region do not take orders from Tehran, though Western nations accuse the country of helping arm, train, and fund such groups.
Earlier, Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations said, "Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S. base."
Jordan condemned what it called a "terrorist attack" on a military site, saying it was cooperating with the United States to fortify its border defenses.
The attack is certain to intensify political pressure in the United States on Biden -- who is in an election year -- to retaliate against Iranian interests in the region, possibly in Iraq or Syria, analysts say.
Many observers have expressed fears of a widening conflict in the Middle East after war broke out in Gaza following the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which has been deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. At least 1,200 were killed in those assaults, leading to Israel's retaliatory actions that, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, have killed more than 26,000 Palestinians.
Because of its support for Israel, U.S. forces have been the target of Islamist groups in the Middle East, including Iran-backed Huthi rebels based in Yemen and militia groups in Iraq who are also supported by Tehran.
On January 24, the United States and Britain announced a set of coordinated sanctions against 11 officials with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for alleged connections to a criminal network that has targeted foreign dissidents and Iranian regime opponents for “numerous assassinations and kidnapping” at the behest of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
A statement by the British Foreign Office said the sanctions are designed “to tackle the domestic threat posed by the Iranian regime, which seeks to export repression, harassment, and coercion against journalists and human rights defenders” in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the latest sanctions packages "exposes the roles of the Iranian officials and gangs involved in activity aimed to undermine, silence, and disrupt the democratic freedoms we value in the U.K."
"The U.K. and U.S. have sent a clear message – we will not tolerate this threat," he added.