After an estimated 165 attacks on US bases in the Middle East since 7 October, it was inevitable one would eventually get through. For the first time, it is believed, US troops were killed from the air by an enemy drone: three US army reservists died and more than 80 were wounded in last weekend’s attack on Tower 22, a little-known logistics base near Jordan’s border with Syria.
The attack, the Pentagon said, had “the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah”, an Iran-aligned militia in Iraq. Joe Biden, the US president, added that he held Tehran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons” – the fast proliferating, relatively cheap drones that are changing the nature of warfare.
