Iran’s Proxies Are Out of Control
Iran and the United States have been in a shadow war with each other for years. That the conflict has never spilled into all-out war is only because both countries have kept to certain unwritten red lines and rules of engagement. One such rule, rarely broken in recent years, is: Thou Shall Not Kill an American Soldier. Even in January 2020, when a U.S. strike killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military figure, the Iranian response didn’t lead to a single U.S. fatality. The tit for tat that had led to the assassination had included the killing of a U.S. contractor, but no U.S. soldiers. On Sunday, this line was crossed. Three American soldiers were killed when a drone hit their living quarters in Tower 22, a small outpost in Jordan, near the country’s borders with Iraq and Syria. The attack was claimed by Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella term used by pro-Iran Iraqi Shiite militias that are backed and trained by the Islamic Republic and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These militias …