For the first time in a long time, American blood was shed in a Middle East war. On Sunday, Iraqi guerrillas allied with Iran killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more along the Jordanian-Syrian border using an explosive drone. President Joe Biden did promised to “all those responsible to be accountable at the time and in the way we choose”. Members of Congress have called for a tough response, with some Republicans calling for all-out war against Iran.
Jordan’s government, clearly not wishing to be drawn into the conflict, did so denied that the attack occurred on his side of the border. Iran has shrugged off responsibility for the attack, insisting that the issue is entirely between the United States and “resistance groups in Iraq and Syria”. The Iraqi fighters may actually have acted on their own initiative. Iraqi commander Qais al-Khazali had done so complained on U.S. airstrikes on Iraq in a speech last November: “You are cautious when it comes to Iranian blood, but you pay no attention to Iraqi blood. Therefore, the Iraqis should teach you a lesson for what you have done.”
The immediate cause of the violence is the war in Gaza, which prompted the Iraqi militias to do so break a truce they had with the US Army. But this particular attack was long overdue. The target was Tower 22, an extension of al-Tanf, a base the U.S. military has maintained in Syria for dark and confusing purposes. In recent years, Israeli planes have used al-Tanf airspace to strike Iranian forces, and Iranian forces have responded to the base. It was only a matter of time before Americans were drawn into the proxy war, with tragic results.
US special forces were first based in al-Tanf during the war against the Islamic State. Their plan was to support the Revolutionary Command, a friendly Syrian rebel group. That project failed embarrassingly. The Revolutionary Commando Army suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Islamic State in 2016, and one of its leaders escaped American made weapons after being accused of drug trafficking in 2020. Kurdish-led forces elsewhere in Syria it has become a much more reliable partner for the US Army.
Meanwhile, Russia, an ally of the Iranian and Syrian governments, has agreed to impose a 55 kilometer “de-conflict zone” around al-Tanf. The area also included Rukban, an unofficial refugee camp built by Syrians fleeing government persecution. (The Syrian government reportedly tortured two former Rukban residents to death in October 2022.) No country wanted to take responsibility for the camp, and it took nearly ten years for the U.S. military to begin provide food aid in Rukban.
Washington, however, had a different purpose in mind for al-Tanf: countering Iran and its allies. The base’s location near the Iraqi-Syrian border made it valuable real estate, especially for anyone intent on dismantling the “Continental Bridge” among Iranian allies. This also allowed the US military and Israeli intelligence to do so Listen on Iranian communications, second Al-Monitor, a Washington-based magazine focused on the Middle East. So the Americans stayed.
“Control of [al-Tanf] neutralized a key border crossing on the road between Baghdad and Damascus, which forced Iran and others to cross from Iraq into Syria to a more distant border crossing to the north,” said former Trump administration official John Bolton in his 2020 memoirs, The room where it happened. “And then why give away free territory?”
Even more provocatively, Israeli forces have begun using al-Tanf airspace to bomb Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in Syria. (Since American planes often fly the same route, “Syrian air defenses cannot tell the difference until it is too late,” one American official said.) said Al-Monitor.) The Israeli air campaign, known as “the war of wars,” was designed to prevent Iran from moving weapons into the region in anticipation of a future war. Israel dropped more than 2,000 bombs on Syria in 2018, through “almost daily“air raids, with the direct involvement of American leaders.
“Israeli attack plans were submitted through the US military chain and reviewed at CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command], usually days before the strike; the attack plans outlined the purpose of the mission, the number of warplanes that would carry out the attack, and when it would occur,” he wrote Wall Street Journal journalist Michael Gordon in his 2022 book, Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State. “They also specified the routes that the Israeli planes would have followed and the coordinates of the target that would have been hit. CENTCOM will examine the request, which will also be shared with the American Secretary of Defense, who will have the final say.”
It seemed like a win-win deal. Israel had a safe route for its bombing, and the United States could weaken a foreign rival without being directly involved. But there was a problem: Iran was not stupid and saw that American troops facilitated raids against its own troops. In retaliation for a series of Israeli attacks in October 2021, the Iranian military bombed al-Tanf The next month. No Americans were injured at the time, but it was an ominous sign of the dangers involved.
The US mission also did not have a legal mandate. Although the president probably had a congressional mandate to fight the Islamic State, there was no legal basis whatsoever to help Israel bomb Iranian troops. Former Trump administration official David Schenker, in a 2021 article defending the al-Tanf base, he admitted that “US military officials are often reluctant to publicly acknowledge it [their Iran-related goals] given concerns about the legal justification for the American presence in Syria.”
When former President Donald Trump tried to withdraw from Syria, officials fought to keep U.S. forces in al-Tanf. Ambassador James Jeffrey, former US Special Envoy for Syria, admitted to “play sleight of hand so as not to make it clear to our leadership how many troops we had” in the country. Bolton successfully pushed for the al-Tanf garrison to be counted separately from other troop deployments. The game was successful. US forces remained until Biden took office, and the new president preferred to keep them in Syria.
Other officials and experts continued to fear that al-Tanf could become a liability. Former US Air Force Colonel Daniel L. Magruder Jr. called al-Tanf”strategic baggage” in an article published by the Brookings Institute a few weeks after Biden’s election. He recommended the withdrawal of American forces in exchange for an agreement to allow the safe passage of refugees. The colonel warned that Russia and Iran had “acted in a provocative” against al-Tanf “Would the United States be able to control the escalation if an American was killed?” he asked.
Three years later, Magruder’s question is sadly relevant. It remains to be seen how Biden will react to the killing of the three American soldiers, and whether that reaction will discourage further violence or make the situation even worse. But Washington can’t say it wasn’t warned.