Islamic Resistance in Iraq claims responsibility for drone attack in Jordan-Syria border
Iran denied the US and British accusations that it supported militant groups behind the drone strike
A group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the drone attack that left three American soldiers dead and 34 wounded at a base along the Jordan-Syria border.
US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that "radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq" were behind the strike on the frontier base in Jordan's northeast.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron reiterated a call for Iran "to de-escalate in the region".
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Iran denied the US and British accusations that it supported militant groups behind the drone strike, Tehran's official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.
"These claims are made with specific political goals to reverse the realities of the region," IRNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying.
Kanaani said such statements threatened "regional and international peace and stability".
Political pressure is piling on US President Joe Biden to deal a blow directly against Iran, a move he's been reluctant to do out of fear of igniting a broader war, Reuters reported.
Biden's response options could range anywhere from targeting Iranian forces outside to even inside Iran, or opting for a more cautious retaliatory attack solely against the Iran-backed militants responsible, experts say.
American forces in the Middle East have been attacked more than 150 times by Iran-backed forces in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and off the coast of Yemen since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.
Per an analysis from the Pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" is not a singular unit per se but rather an umbrella term used to tie the operations of various Iran-backed proxies in Iraq and Syria.
The report determined that an umbrella term obscures responsibility, making it more difficult to determine who is exactly responsible for attacks on US targets.
The group announced itself around May 2004.
