An Iranian attack on a US military facility in Jordan killed three US soldiers, showing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)’s ability to inflict deadly casualties five months into the US-Israel war.
Friday’s airstrike marks the first time that an Iranian attack on a U.S. military facility has killed a U.S. soldier since March 1, just hours after the U.S. and Israel went to war.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The Pentagon has not released details of the attack, but analysts say the deadly incident highlights an uncomfortable reality for the U.S. government. Despite the barrage of U.S. airstrikes, Iran maintains the military strength necessary to continue its long-term asymmetric war.
“Iran’s military capabilities remain formidable. They have recovered faster than expected,” Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at think tank Defense Priorities, told Al Jazeera.
“That attack has become more precise over time, perhaps with the help of Russian and Chinese intelligence services,” she added.
“Iran’s military is by no means ‘combat capable’ as the Pentagon has suggested. It has suffered significant losses, but is learning and adapting over time.”
Why is Iran still able to kill American soldiers?
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College in London, said Iran’s ability to continue to kill US military personnel in the region is due to a combination of many factors, aided by the location and design of US military facilities across the Middle East and the Gulf.
He said about 50,000 U.S. troops were operating from “exposed fixed bases within range of Iran’s increasingly sophisticated missile and drone weapons.”
Many personnel are “held in semi-permanent facilities designed primarily to protect against rockets, mortars, and improvised explosive devices, rather than precision ballistic missiles with large warheads.”
Such an attack could therefore “cause significant damage,” he said. Near misses can lead to traumatic brain injuries from “blast overpressure,” and interceptions can cause injuries from falling debris.
Overall, the official U.S. military death toll in the war stands at 18, including seven soldiers killed in Iranian attacks on Kuwait’s Tactical Operations Center and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base on March 1.
Apart from the three people killed in Jordan, the military said the other deaths were not a direct result of the Iranian attack. These include six airmen killed in a refueling accident in March and, more recently, an Army sergeant killed during a controlled explosion of an armed drone shot down in Iraq.
Approximately 500 U.S. soldiers have been injured since the war began, and approximately 220 major U.S. military equipment and structures are reported to have been damaged or destroyed after the ceasefire broke down on July 8.
Overwhelming air defense power
Krieg said Iran relies on an “increasingly sophisticated” missile and drone arsenal to overwhelm U.S. air defense systems, including the Surface-to-Air Patriot System and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system.
It has developed ballistic and cruise missiles that can approach targets “with different trajectories and different speeds,” as well as armed drones. Combined with decoys and dispersed locations, this could reduce the effectiveness of U.S. defense systems.
“Even if most of the incoming weapons are destroyed, if a small number penetrate the defensive shield, they can cause significant casualties,” Krieg said.
Mona Yakubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Iran appears to be showing “more intent” in attacking U.S. military assets in its recent series of attacks than in the early weeks of the war.
“I think the important thing to emphasize is that this appears to be an emerging pattern in terms of the intensity of attacks by Iran that seek to attack U.S. military targets,” she said.
“That seems to be much more the case now than at any other time in the war.”
Yakubian added that the cost of this latest attack could be the result of improved accuracy, degradation of U.S. defense and radar systems, or a “lucky hit” due to the sheer scale of the attack. It could be a combination of factors, she says.
As of Wednesday, the United States and Iran have been on strike for 11 consecutive days.
The Iranian military recently announced that it targeted F-15 fighter jets, drone preparation facilities, and helicopter storage facilities at Jordan’s Prince Hassan and King Faisal bases. Bahrain’s military also announced that it had intercepted several airstrikes from Iran.
Meanwhile, the US has repeatedly attacked facilities along the Strait of Hormuz in recent escalations, with Central Command (CENTCOM) announcing on Tuesday that US forces were targeting “Iran’s military operations centres, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities and military logistics infrastructure.”
On Wednesday, U.S. senators slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his claim that Iran’s military has been “functionally destroyed” in the war.
“Mr. Secretary, you stated that on the 14th day, the second week of this conflict, the Iranian military was “destroyed” and “incapacitated.” Was that an accurate statement, yes or no? ” asked Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Hegseth claimed the war was a “historic military victory” in which Iran’s navy, air force and “defense industrial base” were crippled.
But, he admitted, “I didn’t expect them to not have the ability to shoot. Against an opponent like the United States, the problem is serious.”
But Jason Campbell, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former Pentagon official, said the U.S. attack appears to indicate that Iran not only maintains missile and drone capabilities, but may also have access to advanced weaponry not previously used.
“We know that Iran has a number of tools that it refrained from using early in the war that it could use later if it wanted to,” Campbell said.
“And one of them, as we just demonstrated, is using some of the larger, more capable ballistic missiles that can be fired very accurately and have a better ability to evade air and missile defenses.”
“At many stages in this process, senior U.S. leadership has either vastly exaggerated Iran and the extent to which Iranian capabilities have degraded, or focused on aspects of Iran’s capabilities that are actually less salient in their ability to pursue their own strategic objectives,” Campbell said.
Patrick Berry, a senior associate professor at the University of Bath and a former NATO research analyst, agreed that despite Washington’s military superiority, Iran is likely to continue to inflict deadly costs on U.S. assets and personnel for some time to come.
“The real problem facing America’s military is that there is an asymmetry in the imposition of costs,” he told Al Jazeera.
“It is well documented that Iran’s stockpile, particularly its drones and missiles, are currently much cheaper to manufacture and launch than the kit needed for an interception.”
“That’s why Iran is able to do damage in a strategic sense,” he added, “and why this issue is not resolved at all.”
Or, as security lecturer Krieg explained, “Iran doesn’t need to defeat the United States militarily; it just needs to breach its defenses often enough to impose human, operational, and political costs on America’s regional presence.”
