We assume President Biden is planning such a response. And we assume it will be swift, but not hasty — and guided by intelligence, which is needed to identify the responsible faction within the Iranian-backed Shiite militia group known as Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which claimed credit for the attack. A tough response is needed to send a signal of support for the base’s host nation, Jordan, whose sovereignty was blatantly violated.
Yet the administration also needs to use this moment for some stocktaking about recent U.S. deterrence of the groups’ ultimate backer, Iran; and that record is mixed. Mr. Biden’s team deserves credit for helping prevent — so far — the worst-case scenario, all-out regional conflict, which many feared after Hamas’s massacre in Israel on Oct. 7. U.S. policy has helped stave off full-scale war on the Israel-Lebanon border, partly by deploying a massive naval force to deter Iran’s proxy Hezbollah and partly by persuading the Israelis not to launch a preemptive strike.
However, the United States finds itself stuck in an inconclusive fight with the Yemen-based Houthis, having failed to stop that militia’s missile and drone attacks on global shipping with airstrikes. The attack in Jordan was just the most recent in a wave of approximately 150 such air raids since Oct. 7, targeting a U.S. ground presence that includes 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria to contain Islamic State militants.
This does not mean the time has come to strike Iranian assets within Iran — as some, including Republicans eager to brand the president as soft on the Islamic republic, are urging. That would be unprecedented in the long history of U.S.-Iranian conflict and would mark a dramatic escalation without necessarily proving decisive. A better option would be to hit Iran hard, and directly, but outside its own territory, along with going after the proxy militias. This could be done by striking Iran’s Revolutionary Guard forces in Syria, Iraq or Yemen.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration should take all needful steps to shore up the defenses for U.S. troops in the region, and to correct whatever combination of technical failure and human error led to the drone penetrating U.S. defenses in Jordan.
Whatever course for retaliation the administration chooses, it would also be best if Mr. Biden kept congressional leaders informed ahead of time, in keeping with the spirit of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. That’s not a plea for prior congressional authorization, which might be impossible in the current polarized political climate. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that the political sustainability of U.S. operations, now and in the future, is partly a function of transparency and legality.
Perhaps most important, the Biden administration needs to rethink strategy on Iran generally, now that it is clear that previous attempts to engage with the Islamic republic via negotiations to contain its nuclear program have hit a dead end. Tehran for the time being seems determined to limit its direct military confrontations with the United States and Israel — but it does so as a matter of prudence, not ideology. To the contrary, the Iranians have aligned themselves firmly with Russia in an apparent effort to help Moscow wage its war in Ukraine, which threatens core U.S. interests in Europe. Always in the background are the nuclear program and the possibility that any restraint the Islamic republic shows with respect to today’s battles might be intended to buy time for an ultimate breakthrough on atomic weapons.
Creative new efforts against the regime’s sources of financial support, and in favor of its domestic opponents, can help further pressure a regime that is not nearly as strong and popular internally as it likes to pretend. Carried out by a radical Islamist militia painstakingly supported and sponsored by Iran, the terrorist attack on Oct. 7 brought profound, probably irreversible changes to a region that the Biden administration had considered comparatively quiet, if not stable. U.S. policy needs a paradigm shift to match.
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