Three Georgia Army reservists were killed in a drone attack at an Army base in Jordan near the Syrian border on Jan. 28. According to The Associated Press, 24–year-old Spc. Kennedy Sanders, 23-year-old Spc. Breonna Moffett and 46-year-old Sgt. William Jerome Rivers were killed after troops allegedly mistook the enemy drone for an American drone.
A preliminary report indicates that the enemy drone and a U.S. drone were entering Tower 22 airspace simultaneously, which allowed the enemy drone to slip in without incident. In addition to the three soldiers who lost their lives, at least 40 troops sustained wounds in the attack.
Reporters asked Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh if the failure to eliminate the drone could be explained by “human error,” to which she replied that U.S. Central Command was still investigating what happened in Jordan. Even though President Joe Biden promised to respond to the attack, which U.S. intelligence believes originated from Iran, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, told The AP, “There’s no easy answer here. And that’s why the president is meeting with his national security team weighing the options before him.”
However, Kirby also took the same stance as Biden. “We are not looking for a war with Iran,” Kirby said to the reporters gathered. “That said, this was a very serious attack. It had lethal consequences. We will respond, and we respond appropriately.”
Back at home, the parents of Moffett hope that cooler heads will prevail; they do not wish to see more violence and more death befall other American troops. Moffett’s mother, Francine, cried as she told The AP her feelings at her kitchen table. “I just hope and pray no other family has to go through this. It takes your heart and your soul,” she said.
Moffett and Sanders were close friends; they became close after they both enlisted in the reserves five years ago. Shawn Sanders, Kennedy’s father, described his daughter as
bright and determined in an interview on Jan. 29, saying, “She was loved. She didn’t have any enemies. All the time, you saw her smiling. This is somebody who was just living life, enjoying life at a young age, working toward a career.”According to The AP, the Jordan attack was the first since Oct. 7 to involve American troops in Jordan and the first to result in American casualties. Iranian-backed militias have consistently struck at American installations in Iraq and Syria, using combinations of drones, rockets, mortars, and missiles. The militias have consistently said that their actions are an attempt to get U.S. forces out of the region and are a protest against the United States’ involvement in the Israeli bombardment of Palestinians. Iran, which has consistently denied responsibility for attacks in the region, continued that practice. According to Iran’s ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani, the “Islamic Republic of Iran has no role in decisions by resistance groups on how
they support the Palestinian nation or defend their people.” Kanaani also said that “responsibility for the consequences of provocative accusations against Iran will be on those who raise the baseless allegations.”Republicans have been critical of Biden’s foreign policy and are using the deaths of the three soldiers to call for the United States to send a message. House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a statement on Twitter/X, saying of the soldiers, “We are saddened by the loss of three American heroes in Jordan last night, and we are praying for their families and for the … other service members who have been injured. America must send a crystal clear message across the globe that attacks on our troops will not be tolerated.”
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, echoed Johnson’s call in his own statement, saying, “Last night, the cost of failure to deter America’s adversaries was again measured in American lives. We cannot afford to keep responding to this violent aggression with hesitation and half-measures.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham took it a step further, calling for strikes on targets inside Iran, which would likely mean war. “The Biden Administration can take out all the Iranian proxies they like, but it will not deter Iranian aggression. I am calling on the Biden Administration to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces but as deterrence against future aggression,” Graham said in a statement. “The only thing the Iranian regime understands is force. Until they pay a price with their infrastructure and their personnel, the attacks on U.S. troops will continue.”
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