US teeters on return to all-out war with Iran after more troops killed
The US military announced overnight that a service member was killed in action in Iraq and another set of unidentified remains was found at the site of an Iranian missile attack in Jordan.
The United States and Iran moved closer to all-out conflict overnight, as the exchange of attacks on civilian and military structures continued to escalate and with at least three and possibly four US service members killed since combat resumed a week ago.
On Sunday (Monday NZT), after two service members were killed during an Iranian strike on a military base in Jordan on Friday, US Central Command said another set of unidentified remains had been found there. Separately, Centcom said a US service member in northern Iraq was killed in action on Saturday during a “controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance” from a downed Iranian drone.
US President Donald Trump called the initial two deaths, which occurred as the war moved through its fifth month, “a very sad thing”.
Speaking to NewsNation in what the outlet said on Sunday was a brief telephone call, Trump said that he “couldn’t care less” about Iran’s announcement that it would no longer abide by the bilateral memorandum of understanding (MOU) reached a month ago.
“The US is planning for a wider war,” said one US official familiar with internal administration discussions, adding that the Pentagon was increasing the number of military aircraft in the region.
But the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media, cautioned that the expansion of US operations will be limited by dwindling stockpiles of air defence and long-range munitions and constraints on the ability to surge more troops and aircraft into the area because of battle damage.
“We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official said.
Military experts have said that in addition to the toll taken on US equipment and munitions stocks, the US is unprepared for possible ground operations inside Iran that Trump last week refused to rule out.
“I think it would be a mistake to put ground forces anywhere in islands in the strait or onshore,” said Seth Jones, who heads the defence and security department at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. “I don’t think US forces are prepared for standoff strikes from Iranians.”
It was the eighth straight day of bombing since the negotiated ceasefire collapsed with a hailstorm of retaliatory attacks after Iran attacked commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz in what it said was a violation of the MOU.
Centcom said its overnight Saturday strikes had “successfully hit Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defence facilities, maritime capabilities, and missile and drone storage sites”. It said they also targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces that hit US troops in Jordan.
Iran said US forces had also attacked a nuclear power plant under construction in the country’s southwest.
But the Trump administration was largely silent during the day on Sunday, with its only official comment coming from Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who said on ABC’s This Week that the US mission to degrade “Iran’s ability to terrorise the world” would go on “until the mission is done”.
The US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said American strikes on bridges and rail lines around Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, last week were viewed by Iran as an escalation and generated a wider response.