Three American troops were killed on Sunday (Jan. 28), and nearly three dozen injured, by an incoming attack drone that hit the barracks of Tower 22, a U.S. logistics hub near the Syrian border.
Tower 22, a small Jordan-based outpost with minimal defenses and just 350 personnel, was designed to serve the Al Tanf garrison in Syria, a far larger installation used as a launch point for counter-terrorism operations.
Via what is known thus far, the attack drone was able to penetrate Tower 22's defenses because a U.S. drone was returning to base at the same time, causing an identification mix-up.
Though two Navy SEALs were lost in a Red Sea operation roughly a week ago, the Americans killed by the Tower 22 strike are the first direct U.S. casualties in the region since Oct. 7.
The attack drone strike was also the first deadly aerial assault on U.S. ground forces since the Korean War — though U.S. outposts and military bases in the region have weathered drone and rocket attacks 160 separate times in recent months.
Given the hailstorm of attacks, it seemed only a matter of time before one of them got through. In October an attack drone hit a U.S. barracks installation in Iraq, but the explosives payload failed to detonate.
Inevitable or not, the American casualties of Tower 22 are a major escalation of the Middle East conflict generally and the U.S.-Iran angle specifically.
President Biden has already promised the United States will respond. The questions are where, when, how, and how forcefully the U.S. will hit back against Iran.
In calibrating its response, the United States has to thread a dangerous needle.
The retaliation has to be serious enough to show Iran that the U.S. means business and is not afraid to take on a conflict if necessary — while at the same time being measured enough to avoid triggering all-out war.
The U.S. also has to gather enough intelligence to show definitively that Iran was behind the attack — taking away plausible deniability — before delivering a show of force that hits Iran directly.
Responding to Iran's proxy forces likely won't do the job; the Iran regime itself has to be deterred from ordering future attacks. But hitting targets inside Iran would amount to a major escalation, with the potential for unmanaged consequences to spiral out of control.
In a presidential election year, the decision of how to retaliate against Iran — a decision ultimately made by President Biden — will instantly be viewed through the lens of politics.
Multiple Republican senators have already gone on record advocating a level of retaliation that, if their rhetoric is taken seriously, sounds like a kick-off to World War III.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for "serious, crippling costs" to Iran, "not only on front-line terrorist proxies, but on their Iranian sponsors who wear American blood as a badge of honor."
"Hit Iran now," urged Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "Hit them hard," he added, further urging that the U.S. "strike targets of significance inside Iran."
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas posted two words on social media — "Strike Tehran" — while Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas was perhaps the most hyperbolic of all.
"The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran's terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East," Cotton said. "Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief."
In our view these senators are behaving like chickenhawks, advocating a kind of biblical unleashing of blood and hellfire because they know someone else will take the actual responsibility — and the inevitable criticisms — for whatever decisions are made.
On the one hand, if President Biden does not order a strong enough level of retaliation, he can be accused of weakness and cowardice (as Cotton has already done); on the other hand, if the U.S.-Iran situation spirals out of control, he will be blamed for turning the Middle East into a giant fireball. There are no easy calls here.
How, then, should the United States respond?
That is a nuanced question with multiple variables, some of them depending on the results of the intelligence-gathering process — finding out more about how the situation unfolded — and some of them depending on Israel, or rather, what Israel decides to do next in consultation with the United States.
What's more, there is a lot of ground between "do nothing" at one end of the continuum and "turn Tehran into a parking lot" at the other.
Retired admiral and NATO commander James Stavridis points out the United States has a range of retaliation responses that can be deployed against Iran.
For example, the United States could:
Conduct cyberattacks to disable the Iranian regime's ability to communicate with proxy forces.
Destabilize or disable Iranian oil and gas networks to hit Iran's major source of revenues.
Attack Iran's military production facilities (which would also help Ukraine, as Iran supplies Russia with drones and other weapons used against Ukraine).
Conduct an operation comparable to Operation Praying Mantis, a U.S. Navy retaliation strike against Iranian ships and surveillance platforms in 1988.
In the calculus of how to retaliate against Iran, another complicating factor is — wait for it — the Strait of Hormuz.
We have written about the Strait of Hormuz multiple times in these pages since the Oct. 7 attacks.
That is because the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most important oil chokepoints in the world — far more important than the Red Sea or the Suez Canal or the Bab el-Mandeb — to the extent that close to 20% of the world's oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Were the Strait of Hormuz to be shut down by conflict escalation for any significant length of time — or as a retaliation move from an Iran under siege — the crude oil price could easily double.
A Strait of Hormuz shutdown via U.S.-Iran conflict escalation, by way of its catastrophic impact on oil prices, could wind up wreaking havoc with the global economy, throwing the inflation picture into chaos, and basically destabilizing everything.
So, yeah. The picture is a little bit more complicated than Senators Graham and Cotton are making it out to be.
Nonetheless, something needs to be done — and it will. What's more, the relative calmness of markets at this point (the oil price is not up that much) could be a red herring.
As with the delayed response to the Covid outbreak in March 2020, or looking even further back, the delayed response to the World War I escalation events of 1914, markets have a habit of not responding to severe geopolitical risks until the last possible moment.
Until next time,
Justice Clark Litle Chief Research Officer, TradeSmith
TradeSmith is not registered as an investment adviser and operates under the publishers' exemption of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The investments and strategies discussed in TradeSmith's content do not constitute personalized investment advice. Any trading or investment decisions you take are in reliance on your own analysis and judgment and not in reliance on TradeSmith. There are risks inherent in investing and past investment performance is not indicative of future results.
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