Join institutional investors, analysts and strategists from the world's largest banks: Subscribe today
Already have an account? log in
Stakes Rise For Biden As Iranian Proxies Kill Three US Service Members
The next escalation in the Mideast was always a matter of if, and when, US soldiers were killed.
Although the Pentagon lost a couple of Navy SEALs earlier this month in an operation to seize a shipment of Iranian resupplies bound for Yemen, they weren't killed by enemy fire. (They drowned.)
On Sunday, though, three US service members died in a drone strike on a base in Jordan near the border with Syria. Iranian proxies operating out of Syria and Iraq were responsible, the US said, adding that
I believe that Iran’s escalation is directly linked to “out of control” inflation and worsening living standards for Iranians. Therefore, Khamenei has no choice but to redirect his people’s ire from him to America.
Just a thought: suppose Iran doesn’t actually have the fine-grained control over its proxies and their weapons that everyone thinks it has.
This was just released by the Treasury department in December linking the funding for Houthis back to the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If the IRGC is providing funding, it doesn’t seem like a stretch that Iran is controlling the Houthis.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2014
Maybe they don’t but that kind of make it worse. They’re playing with fire when they can’t properly control it and the effects are thus not guaranteed to be what they wanted…
I agree with our host that this is all very strange from Teheran pov b/c none of this is regime survival enhancing… unless SeaTurtle is right and it’s an internal diversion attempt?
The strangeness is why I’m wondering how much control Iran has. Although I think it does (have control), it is strange.