Decoding the Tower 22 Attack in Jordan: Challenges and Future Perspectives — Part I

By Maj Gen P K Mallick, VSM (Retd)

On night of January 27, 2024, a kamikaze drone swooped down and hit a U.S. military desert outpost in the far reaches of North Eastern Jordan known as Tower 22. The base in Jordan sits close to the triple border with Syria and Iraq.

The base is used mainly by troops involved in the advise-and-assist mission for Jordanian forces. The small installation, which Jordan does not publicly disclose, includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops. Lloyd Austin, U.S. Defence Secretary, said that the troops were deployed there to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS.

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Tower 22 serves as a logistics and resupply hub for the Al Tanf garrison nearby in South Eastern Syria, where American troops work with local Syrian partners to fight remnants of the Islamic State.

The U.S. military personnel were sleeping in a tent as temporary living quarters. The one-way attack drone hit near the outpost’s living quarters, causing injuries that ranged from minor cuts to brain trauma.

The blast killed three U.S. Army Reservists from the Georgia-based 718th Engineer Company and injured over 40 more troops. Eight were evacuated abroad for treatment and are in stable condition.

Tower 22, a small outpost, housed 350 U.S. soldiers and airmen. Roughly one-tenth of its personnel were killed or wounded by the drone attack.

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(From left to right) Sgt William J. Rivers, Spc Kennedy L. Sanders and Spc Breonna A. Moffett

The three came from an army reserve unit based in Georgia. They were all supporting Operation Inherent Resolve and had been assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Georgia.

U.S. officials assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups was behind the attack. An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions, which calls itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the attack. The group had claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.

This coalition militias includes the Nujaba Movement, Kataib Hezbollah, Kataib Sayyed al-Shuhada, Ashab al-Kahf and others. As this is an umbrella organisation for several Iranian-backed Shia militias, the claim diffuses responsibility, leaving the exact perpetrators unclear. Suspicion is falling particularly on the group Kataib Hezbollah.

Iran has sought to distance itself from the attacks, labelling allegations it had a hand in the assault as baseless while claiming regional resistance movements do not take orders from it.

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How was the attack successful? 

It is not clear why U.S. base Air defences failed to intercept the drones, which were allegedly launched by Iran-backed militias from neighbouring Syria.

The U.S. military is investigating whether human error contributed to the failure to stop the enemy drone. Iranian militia groups have sometimes sought to get past U.S. defences by operating drones that closely follow the flight path of American drones.

The enemy drone came in “very low and very slow” at the same time that an American drone was returning to the base from a mission. The auto-response features of the base’s air defence system were turned off so as not to shoot down the U.S. drone. There was little to no warning for troops stationed at Tower 22, who were still in their sleeping quarters when the drone struck.

The attack draws attention to the urgent need to upgrade and revolutionise the U.S. Army’s air defences.

Two other drones that attacked other locations nearby were shot down,

It remains to be confirmed whether the drone was of Iranian lineage or improvised locally. It appears the drone used in the attack on Tower 22 in Jordan was Iranian-made. According to the U.S. official, it was a type of Shahed drone – a one-way attack drone Iran has been providing to Russia.

Patriot air defence missile batteries did not cover the base, one of the U.S.’s few and costly air defence systems. Patriot air defence missiles are not considered ideal counters to threats from cheaper drones due to their high price per shot, $3-4 million per missile.

The attack on Tower 22 reinforces the growing lethal threat posed by drones, even those deployed by non-state actors. There is a need to deploy anti-drone capabilities everywhere systematically. Most likely, such Air Defences were present at a base of Tower 22’s size but failed to engage due to an identify-friend-or-foe error. No defence is perfect. Attackers are likely to get lucky at least once, given enough chances.

Where is the Tower 22 military base?

Tower 22 sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometres away. The area is known as Rukban, a vast arid region. The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border. After American forces entered Syria in late 2015, there was an increased U.S. presence there. U.S. troops have been using 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 are typically stationed across Jordan.

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 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.

The Jordanian installation provides a critical logistics and resupply hub for U.S. forces in Syria, including those at al-Tanf, which is near where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan intersect. The American troops work with local Syrian partners to fight remnants of the Islamic State.

The base serves as a crossing point for U.S. special operations forces moving into Syria and is a logistics hub supporting the fight in Syria against the Islamic State. U.S. training of Jordanian forces also takes place there.

The living quarters at Tower 22 are temporary. There are no brick-and-mortar buildings at a location like this.

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a military base known as Tower 22 in northeastern Jordan on Oct. 12, 2023.

The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border, then saw an increased US presence after American forces entered Syria in late 2015. The small installation includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops. The presence of the base, established in 2016 and known as Tower 22, had previously been kept secret.

The base is very close to the Syrian border. Thousands of improvised tents have come up in the middle of the desert by displaced Syrians fleeing the Islamic State group (IS). The small base was surrounded by fortified barbed wire-topped walls with military cameras and used to be protected by the Jordanian army from all sides earlier. IS had targeted the American base in June 2016 with a car bomb, killing six Jordanian soldiers who were guarding the entrance to the base. The Jordanian army said at the time that it was its base.

U.S. reaction to the Tower 22 attack.

President Joe Biden said the “despicable and wholly unjust” attacks had been carried out by “radical Iran-backed militant groups”. He vowed that the U.S. “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and manner of our choosing”.

Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said, “We will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops, and our interests.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate. But we will absolutely do what is required to protect ourselves”.

U.S. Forces in the region

Iraq. 2,500 U.S. forces remain in Iraq for training and anti-Islamic State operations. Increasingly, they are getting involved in tit-for-tat exchanges with Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. Since the Israel-Hamas war began, U.S. forces in Iraq have been attacked around 60 times.

Syria. There are 900 U.S. troops in Syria, many of them at Al-Tanf, a base that trains forces for anti-Islamic State operations. The U.S. has hit Iran-linked sites in Syria multiple times since the Biden administration took office in 2021, including in February and June 2021, August 2022, and numerous times in late 2023 without spurring regional escalation from Iran.

Jordan. In Jordan, 3,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed to train and advise Jordanian forces. Jordan, a staunch Western ally, is suspected of launching airstrikes in Syria to, including one that killed nine people earlier in January. Jordan initially denied the Tower 22 base existed within its border insisting the attack happened across the border in Syria.  The U.S. presence in Jordan risks angering a population that’s already held mass demonstrations against Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It is estimated around three million of Jordan’s 11.5 million people are Palestinian.

U.S. forces remain based in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

It is the first time U.S. soldiers have been killed by strikes in the region after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza. This is a significant escalation by Iranian-backed groups in the region. However, it was expected. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel, there have been more than 150 attacks by Iranian-backed militias on U.S. forces in the region. Until now, Biden had carefully calibrated his responses to these attacks. Sooner or later, the skirmishes had to lead to casualties for U.S. forces.

White House is under tremendous pressure to respond forcefully to the attack. Some lawmakers and current and former officials are calling for strikes against Iranian targets. Mr Biden’s dilemma is how to retaliate, who to hit and where to hit and how to balance and proportionate any response. The question is whether the U.S. can deter attacks by hitting back hard or whether it will add fuel to a growing fire in the region.

The U.S. has the option to carry out extended campaigns against these militias in both Syria and Iraq. However, this would cause U.S. domestic opposition, deterioration of security conditions in Iraq, a regional spillover to the GCC and potentially generate the threat of a direct escalation between the U.S. and Iran.

In a low-probability, high-risk scenario, the U.S. could choose a campaign to significantly deter and degrade the infrastructure and capabilities of Iran-backed militias in Syria, Iraq or both. Such a campaign would not involve a substantial increase in U.S. troop numbers but would see an increase in air sorties and a lower threshold for the authorisation of airstrikes on Iranian-linked targets.

This option is not probable now as it could face congressional and domestic public opposition. Deeper military involvement in Syria and Iraq is unpopular. As the U.S. is actively involved in an extended air and sea campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, there is growing concern regarding a possible military confrontation with Iran.

The Biden administration will try to avoid a foreign crisis during an election year. An extended campaign in Iraq would increase already growing anti-U.S. sentiment, escalating anti-U.S. protests to violence against U.S. or Western institutions and companies there. It could strengthen the political incentive for Iraq to accelerate talks to reframe the U.S.-Iraqi strategic relationship.

President Biden has to decide how far he is willing to go.

P.S. –

On January 29, 2024, US. President Joe Biden announced that he decided on the US response to the Jordan drone attack, adding that the United States does not seek to expand the war in the Middle East. The President did not provide details about what course of action the U.S. would take.

John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson said that the United States may use a tiered approach involving multiple actions over a period of time to respond to the attack. He said, “The guiding principle is making sure that we continue to degrade the kinds of capabilities that these groups have at their disposal to use against our troops and our facilities. “

The Kataib Hezbollah group or Brigades of the Party of God, likely responsible for the attack on Tower 20, under pressure from the Iraqi government and Iran has issued a statement, “We announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces — in order to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government.”

It is intended to forestall an imminent U.S. military operation that the Iranian and Iraqi governments want to avoid.

Kata’ib Hezbollah was not happy about it. The group made its point to suggest that it chooses its own targets and timing, rather than following Iran’s orders. The statement said, “Our brothers in the Axis, especially in the Islamic Republic of Iran, they do not know how we conduct our Jihad, and they often object to the pressure and escalation against the American occupation forces in Iraq and Syria.”

Things are likely to happen fast in the region. In Part II U.S. options and its effects on Axis of Evil will be discussed.

The author is an Indian Army Veteran.

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