The Department of Defense on Monday identified the names of the three American service members killed in a drone strike carried out by an Iran-backed militia group Sunday.
The soldiers killed were Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett. The three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade out of Fort Moore, Georgia.
They were stationed at the targeted outpost in Jordan as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the United States’ operation against the Islamic State terrorist organization.
U.S. officials said Monday that the reason why the U.S. did not stop the drone attack that killed the three American service members in Jordan on Sunday was that the Iranian proxy weapon approached the U.S. outpost at the same time an American drone was returning to the base, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The American drone’s flight back to the outpost prompted uncertainty over its identity, officials said, and the air defenses at the base were not deployed before the strike. According to those officials, the U.S. military was able to successfully shoot down two other drones targeting other locations.
The attack Sunday was the first that killed American service members since Iranian proxy groups began their strikes against U.S. forces since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and the ensuing aggression from various Iran-backed militant organizations.
Addressing the attack, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby maintained that the Biden administration does not wish for a broader conflict to erupt across the Middle East, but affirmed that the U.S. will answer the strike.
“We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate,” Kirby said. “But we will absolutely do what is required to protect ourselves, to continue that mission, and to respond appropriately to these attacks.”
While the Islamic Republic has denied a role in the planning and execution of the drone attack, a Telegram channel associated with Iranian proxies said the strike was a response to previous American retaliatory action against militias in Iraq.
The Biden administration is reportedly considering strikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria in response, as well as potentially hitting targets within Iran — though the latter option is, according to officials, significantly less likely to occur.
Several Republican lawmakers have urged the White House to take direct action against the Islamic Republic, with Senator Lindsay Graham (S.C.) writing on X, “Hit Iran now. Hit them hard,” and Senator John Cornyn (Texas) calling on the Biden administration to “Target Tehran.” Cornyn specified in a follow-up post that he was referring not to the city itself but to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Quds Force branch, which receives orders from the ayatollah in Tehran.