We honor the three American service members: Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett who volunteered to serve this country and paid the ultimate price in Jordan. Iran is ultimately to blame for their deaths and a strong U.S. military response against the Iran regime is required.
Sadly, despite warnings issued by many in the foreign policy community, the Biden administration has so far failed to effectively respond to Iran’s ever more grievous provocations. Permitting Iran-backed proxy attacks against US forces without a meaningful response, such as seriously degrading their ability to attack US forces, was always going to inevitably lead to American deaths.
There is a pattern of bad decision-making leading up to the Iranian-backed terrorists attacking US forces in Jordan on Sunday, and in the August 2021 terrorist attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan that took the lives of 13 American service members. In both cases, US forces were unacceptably vulnerable, and the Biden administration refused to adapt its strategy to maximize troop safety and make the enemy fear the potential US response if the enemy attacked.
When asked about possible responses to Tehran-backed terror against US forces, Biden officials have frequently responded that the administration does not want a wider war in the region as justification for their weak and infrequent retaliatory responses. But the administration’s tepid reactions are not persuading Iran to arrest its aggression. Following Sunday’s attack, Secretary Blinken described this moment as the most dangerous time in the Middle East since the 1970s. There have been other dangerous inflection points over the last half century; regardless, his statement is an indictment of the Biden policies he defends.