The Middle East is once again teetering on the edge of exploding into a far wider war in a very short time.
The next to light a fuse for that explosion could be the United States.
Dementia-ridden war criminals Joe Biden and his grotesque National Security Advisor John Kirby have said in several forums over the last few days that they will be responding soon to the drone resistance attack on January 28 on the United States Tower 22 U.S. military base located on the border of Jordan and Syria. That base is acknowledged by the Pentagon as supporting another airbase the United States operates on illegally-occupied land in Syria but not far from Jordan. That base in Syria has been used among other things to stage attacks on Iranian installations in Syria which are legally there with the permission of the Syrian government.
The Tower 22 air strike killed three American troops and caused serious injuries to dozens more.
According to the White House, these deaths are the first which have happened on any U.S. bases in the Middle East since the Israeli genocide on Palestinians in Gaza began after October 7. As such, responding to them quickly is considered of the highest priority for Joe Biden and the Pentagon, as a way of sending a message to all those involved.
In a press briefing held yesterday, Kirby said the Pentagon had concluded that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq had “planned, resourced, and facilitated” the drone assault on the Tower 22 military base. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is a collective of alleged Iranian-backed groups which include the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba organization, Kataib Hezbollah, and other insurgent groups based in Iraq. The Pentagon says these groups have been supplied by Iran with weapons.
Kataib Hezbollah is the group which was responsible for the January 20 attack on United States’ Ain al-Asad Air Base located in the province of Anbar in Iraq. That aerial assault did not kill anyone but is understood to have caused considerable damage.
There is nothing known yet about what the Pentagon plans to do in terms of the “proportionate response” the White House has promised as retribution for what happened. Apparently, the immense body count it is already responsible for in the region is not enough.
It is believed Israel has been directing U.S. officials to take action strong enough to represent a “real threat” to Iran if it was to continue to support the resistance. That comes from former Israeli intelligence official Avi Melamed in a recent interview about the Tower 22 attack.
Though nothing is known yet about what might happen, enough hints have come through, however, to cause a spokesperson for Kataib Hezbollah to issue a surprise statement yesterday on its website.
“We’re announcing the suspension of our military and security operations against the occupying forces to avoid any embarrassment for the Iraqi government,” the group wrote. “…Militia are ordered to temporarily defend passively if any hostile American action occurs towards them.”
The Pentagon threats also caused Iran to respond with warnings of its own.
“We hear some threats from American officials about targeting Iran,” said Major General Hossein Salami, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) yesterday. “We tell them that you tested us and we know each other. We do not leave any threat unanswered, and we do not look for war, but we are not afraid of it. This is the well-known truth.”
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, also spoke publicly yesterday on the matter, with comments made to journalists at the country’s state-owned IRNA news agency.
“[Our country] would decisively respond to any attack on the country, its interests and nationals under any pretexts,” he warned.
Earlier this week Iran had also briefly issued and then quickly retracted a statement through its IRNA Telegram channel that it should be considered a nuclear capable state and that it has enough highly enriched uranium for numerous warheads, which is likely true. Iran is certainly technologically advanced enough to build its own nuclear bombs and may already have warheads from North Korea.
Back in June of 2023, Iran claimed to have a hypersonic ballistic missile call the Fattah, which is something that the U.S. has no defense against. Iran also has the ability to detonate EMP weapons that can cause severe power blackouts and disable computerized devices.
Iran is believed to have some troops pre-positioned in the U.S. who could carry out attacks on U.S. military bases or civilian targets, but very few compared to the thousands or tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers in the U.S.. China partially supports its U.S. based forces through its thousands of licensed and illegal cannabis farms.
Through its membership in China's Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Iran has access to an extensive regional intelligence network for detecting and preventing potential terrorist attacks form American and Israeli proxies, but the SCO is not setup as a collective defense organization. However, if Iran is attacked on a significant level other SCO members may come to its aid.