The White House said Monday that the United States will not go to war with Iran after three U.S. soldiers were killed in the Middle East in a drone attack the Joe Biden administration attributed to Iran-backed militias.
“We are not looking for a war with Iran,” John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told reporters during a regular press briefing at the White House, saying that the United States is “not looking to escalate” the situation following the “escalatory” attack resulting in first U.S. fatalities since the start of the Israeli-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7.
“It requires a response, make no mistake about that. I will not get ahead of the president’s decision-making,” Kirby said.
In a written statement on Sunday, Biden vowed that the United States will take action to hold those responsible for the attack to account “at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing.”
Kirby’s remarks were later echoed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“We want to prevent this conflict from spreading, so we are intent on doing both, that is standing up for our people when they’re attacked, while at the same time working every single day to prevent the conflict from growing and spreading,” Blinken said during a press availability at the U.S. Department of State attended by visiting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 40 others were wounded in the drone attack on Saturday night U.S. Eastern Time targeting U.S. forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the border with Syria, according to an update from Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh at a separate press conference Monday.
The Pentagon on Monday identified the three fallen soldiers, all of whom were members of a U.S. Army Reserve unit.
Citing anonymous officials, U.S. media reported Monday that the reason the one-way attack drone slipped U.S. defenses to successfully carry out the attack was that U.S. personnel confused the “enemy drone” with one of their own returning to the U.S. base from a surveillance mission.
“I can’t corroborate those accounts by U.S. officials,” Kirby said at the White House briefing when pressed to explain the possible cause. “The Department of Defense is, as you would expect them to do, going through all the forensics here to figure out exactly what happened and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
