Confused by the radar trail of its own drone returning from a mission, U.S. forces failed to stop the terrorist drone that killed three servicemembers at a base in Jordan, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.
Radar operators mistook the image of the enemy drone, which was launched from Iraq, for their own drone, U.S. officials told The Journal. The enemy drone was flying at low altitude at the same time the American drone was in the air, and may have been trailing right behind it, Politico reported.That may explain why U.S. anti-aircraft defenses were not activated and the drone was able to hit a dormitory on the base.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a militia funded and armed by Iran, has claimed credit for the attack. The U.S. has yet to find evidence that Iran specifically directed the attack, although the militias it has armed have been operating largely on their own for years.
The drone hit a U.S. base called Tower 22, which sits in Jordan near its border with Iraq and Syria, where the U.S. also has troops stationed. About 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel staff the base, and more than 35 were reported injured when the drone hit, the U.S. Central Command said.
"We are not interested in a broader conflict in the region, we're not looking for another war, but we absolutely will do what we have to do to protect ourselves," John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council at the White House, said in an interview with CBS News on Monday.
An official with the militant group that took responsibility for the strike told the Washington Post that “if the U.S. keeps supporting Israel, there will [be] escalations. All the U.S. interests in the region are legitimate targets and we don’t care about U.S. threats to respond; we know the direction we are taking, and martyrdom is our prize.”
Michael Pregent, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and an expert in Middle East and North Africa political and security issues, told the Voice of America that Iran “doesn't want a war with the United States. But Tehran wants to use its proxies to push the United States out of the Middle East.”