US ‘not looking for a war with Iran’ after deadly attack, White House says

US ‘not looking for a war with Iran’ after the deadly attack, White House says

Financial Times -Jan 29th2024

Felicia Schwartz and Aime Williams in Washington, Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and Raya Jalabi in Beirut

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Washington said it was “not looking for a war with Iran” on Monday, as Tehran distanced itself from an attack that killed three US soldiers. A day after blaming “radical Iran-backed militant groups” for the drone strike on a military base in north-east Jordan, the White House said it was not seeking to escalate the conflict in the region. “We are not looking for a war with Iran,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told NBC’s Today Show. But he added: “We’ll keep looking at the options . . . We want these attacks to stop.” Kirby’s comments came after Iran’s foreign ministry labelled any accusation that it was involved in the US troops’ deaths as a “baseless” conspiracy by those “interested in dragging the US into a new conflict in the region to intensify the crisis”. Tehran’s mission to the UN depicted the strike as part of clashes “between the US army and resistance groups in the region, who reciprocally confront each other”, in comments quoted by IRNA, Iran’s official news agency.

The US has hit targets linked to Tehran-backed militias across the region following more than 160 attacks by such groups on US troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan since October, as well as 30 strikes on international shipping in the Red Sea. To date it has not struck Iran directly — although, in reference to the deaths of three American service members, Kirby said: “We’re now in different territory.” Sunday’s deaths mark the first time US troops have been killed in an attack in the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war began in Gaza in October. Kirby said the US was “still working our way through” attributing responsibility for Sunday’s drone attack. But he added that Washington believed the group involved was supported by Kataib Hizbollah, a militant Iranian-backed Iraqi militia. Lloyd Austin, US defence secretary, said he and US President Joe Biden would “take all necessary actions to defend the US and our troops”.