Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday warned of an “incredibly volatile time” in the Middle East, comparable to “at least 1973,” if not before.
“First I think it’s very important to note that this is an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East,” Blinken said Monday during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. “I would argue that we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 1973, and arguably even before that.”
Blinken’s remarks came in response to a question of whether earlier action by the United States against Iran and its proxies might have saved American lives, following the weekend drone strike in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops and wounded about 40 others.
The suicide drone attack was carried out by Iran-backed militia groups, which targeted Tower 22, a U.S. base in Jordan, in Sunday’s early morning hours, according to the Pentagon. It killed three soldiers who were serving in the Army Reserve and were assigned to Georgia’s Fort Moore.
Attacks by Iranian proxies and Iran-backed groups against U.S. forces in the Middle East have increased in recent months since Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas broke out in early October.
The Yom Kippur War in October 1973 left about 2,600 casualties in just 19 days. It was sparked by an attack against Israel by Egypt and Syria looking to take back the Golan Heights and the Sinai, which Israel took during the Six-Day War in 1967. In between these two conflicts was the War of Attrition, primarily between Egypt and Israel over the countries’ ongoing tensions.
The drone strike, which was the first to kill U.S. troops since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, renewed calls on the Biden administration to retaliate against Iran and take a stronger stance amid the flurry of attacks.
Blinken on Monday reiterated the Biden administration’s position, telling the press, “We’ve made very, very clear from day one that we’re going to defend our people, we’re going to defend our personnel, we’re going to defend our interests, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
“We’ve taken action, and significant action, to deter groups, to degrade their capabilities in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen,” he continued.
Amid concerns the violence could spark a wider, regional conflict, Blinken noted the Biden administration is looking to prevent “border escalation.”
“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,” he added.
Blinken declined to go into further detail on what a U.S. response to the ongoing attacks could look like, but noted the U.S. “will respond strongly.”
“And that response could be multileveled, come in stages, and be sustained over time,” he added.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said earlier Monday that Biden is “weighing the options” and that the U.S. will respond “on our schedule, in our own time.”
Blinken’s remarks contrast those made by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who eight days before Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attack against Israel, described the Middle East region as “quieter” than it had been in two decades.
In his remarks, given during The Atlantic Festival in September, Sullivan said the “amount of time” he has to “spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11 is significantly reduced.”
When pressed on his apparently faulty analysis after the attack on Israel, Sullivan said those comments were made “in the context of developments in the wider Middle East region over the last few years.” He added his analysis noted the situation in the Middle East “could all change” and cited ongoing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and the threat of Iran.
“And so, yes, it is true that those two threats remained a real challenge to the long-term stability of the Middle East region, and we’ve just seen this absolutely tragic attack,” he said during an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “But at no point did the Biden administration take its eye off the ball of the threats to Israel.”