Alistair Bunkall, the Middle East correspondent for the London-based Sky News, wrote an analysis on the attack in Jordan -- which US President Joe Biden said had taken place on Saturday night -- and its possible impacts on a wider conflict in the West Asia region where tensions have already run high due to the Israeli regime’s war on Gaza that began in early October, the IRNA reported on Monday.
“The deaths of three US soldiers are the first since 7 October and because of the location, the Jordanian border, and the anticipated American response, this is certainly an escalation in the wider Middle East conflict,” Bunkall said.
The attack, which also left dozens of American soldiers wounded, targeted Tower 22 located in the Jordanian side of the border with Syria.
According to the Sky News correspondent, Tower 22 “is not a conventional US military outpost in the region. It's a crossing point between Jordan and Syria, established since at least 2015 and used as an infiltration point for US special forces to enter and exit Syria.”
Bunkall believes that the attack was likely launched from within Syria, and suggests an intelligence failure to prevent it as the tower was not well guarded as more established bases.
The London-based correspondent also believes that the attack in Jordan is a retaliation by Iraq-based resistance groups.
The positions of those groups have been struck by the US in recent weeks following their attacks on American interests in the region, which the Iraqi resistance said were in response to Washington’s support for the Israeli regime’s crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Bunkall, the drone attack in Jordan shows “how the war in Gaza is spreading through the Middle East.”
“America, as Israel's staunch ally, is finding itself increasingly dragged into multiple smaller-scale skirmishes around the region… The hope is that a ceasefire in Gaza, possibly close, will see things calm down elsewhere, but every passing week sees the fallout of Israel's war affect other parts of the Middle East.”
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