A US military desert outpost in the far reaches of northeastern Jordan has become the focus of international attention after a drone attack killed three American troops and injured at least 34 others there.
The US has vowed retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria that are likely to be more powerful than the previous attacks in the countries. As per reports, the US military facilities in Iraq and Syria have been targeted over 160 times since October last year since Israel-Hamas war.
All About Tower 22
The US base, known as Tower 22, sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria along a sandy, bulldozed berm marking the DMZ’s southern edge. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometres away.
The area is known as Rukban, a vast arid region that once saw a refugee camp spring up on the Syrian side over the rise of the Islamic State group’s so-called caliphate in 2014.
At its height, over 1 lakh people lived there, blocked by Jordan from coming across into the kingdom at the time over concerns about infiltration by the extremist group. Those concerns grew out of a 2016 car bomb attack there that killed seven Jordanian border guards
The camp has dwindled in the time since to some 7,500 people because of a lack of supplies reaching there, according to United Nations estimates.
The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border, then saw an increased US presence there after American forces entered Syria in late 2015. The small installation includes US engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops with about 350 US Army and Air Force personnel deployed there.
The base’s location offers a site for American forces to infiltrate and quietly leave Syria. A small American garrison at al-Tanf in Syria is just 20 kilometres north of Tower 22. That base is along a Syrian highway leading into Iraq and ultimately Mosul, once a prominent base of the Islamic State group. It’s also a potential weapons shipment route over the road for Iran.
US’ Presence in Jordan
US troops long have used Jordan, a kingdom bordering Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Syria, as a basing point. Some 3,000 American troops typically are stationed across Jordan.
However, the US presence in Jordan risks angering a population that’s already held mass demonstrations against Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip over civilian casualties in a conflict that’s already killed over 26,000 Palestinians. Estimates suggest some 3 million of Jordan’s 11.5 million people are Palestinian.
Widespread unrest could threaten the rule of King Abdullah II, a key American ally. Jordan initially denied the Tower 22 base existed within its border after the attack Sunday.
US and Iran Proxy War
The killing of the American soldiers is dragging the US further into a proxy war with Iran that President Joe Biden had hoped to avoid and that he still hopes can be contained.
After years of trying to ease tensions with Iran through dialogue, and then months seeking to keep the Israel-Hamas war from escalating, the drone strike by Iranian-backed militants on US forces in Jordan crossed an unstated red line for the Biden administration.
The United States has already been hitting another Iranian-backed group, Yemen’s Huthi rebels. The strikes come after warnings failed to dissuade Huthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, which the insurgents say are acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza being bombarded by US ally Israel.
The White House has promised a “very consequential” response to the Jordan attack, which comes at the start of an election year in which Biden’s Republican rivals are going on the offensive and urging direct attacks on Iran.
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