WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has made it clear the U.S. will strike back after a deadly drone attack killed three service members and wounded more than 40 at a small base in Jordan over the weekend. What isn’t yet clear is who will be hit, where, and how hard.

Biden has a wide array of options, but the U.S. must walk a fine line: A weak response will do little to deter further attacks by Iran-backed militia groups, while a major assault risks expanding the turmoil in the Middle East and drawing America into a wider conflict.

On Tuesday, Biden bluntly said “yes” when asked if he’d decided how to respond to the attack. But he provided no details, and added that the U.S. wants to avoid triggering a broader Middle East war. “That’s not what I’m looking for,” he said.

Still, the three service members are the first to be killed in militia strikes since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza. And their deaths have triggered demands for a strong American response.

Target options range from inside Iran, including on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, to Iranian ships at sea and Tehran-backed militia groups and key militant leaders in Iraq and Syria. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby raised the possibility that the U.S. will take a “tiered approach” with several actions over a period of time.

Here’s a look as some options.

DIRECT STRIKE ON IRAN

Officials across the administration have said the U.S. believes Iran bears responsibility for arming, funding and supporting the militias that have been waging an escalating campaign of drone, missile and rocket strikes on American forces in Iraq, Syria and now Jordan.

“I do hold them responsible in a sense because they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it,.” Biden said Tuesday.

Striking inside Iran — including on the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force — would send a strong, direct message to Tehran.

Some argue that such a move is needed, because U.S. strikes on Iran-backed militias in recent months have not deterred them. But it also would be the riskiest move, due to worries it would inflame the militias and enrage Tehran.

Attacking Iranian assets or leaders outside the country may be more palatable. The U.S. did that in 2020, when it killed Quds Force leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani, with a drone strike in Iraq, in response to attacks on U.S. bases there and an assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Iran responded, launching a barrage of ballistic missiles at al-Asad air base in Iraq, injuring dozens of U.S. forces, with most suffering traumatic brain injuries.

Former Israeli intelligence official and Middle East analyst Avi Melamed said Iran has billions of dollars in military investment projects in Syria and by striking those the U.S. could punish Tehran without the escalation threat of a direct strike on Iran. One example, he said, is a large compound near Boukamal that is used for ballistic missile storage. The U.S. has previously struck facilities there in response to militia attacks.

“There is no shortage of military targets (in Syria) that the American administration can target and cause significant damage to the Iranian regime,” Melamed said.

HIT MILITIA GROUPS AGAIN

The most likely move would be to hit Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria again. As of Tuesday, those groups had launched 166 attacks on U.S. military installations since Oct. 18, including 67 in Iraq, 98 in Syria and now one in Jordan, according to a U.S. military official.

On Tuesday, one of the major Iran-backed militia groups, Kataib Hezbollah, announced in a statement “the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces” in Iraq, referring to U.S. troops. The group, which U.S. officials consider a top suspect in the Jordan attack, said the suspension was to “prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government.”

In response, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said “actions speak louder than words.”

The attacks on U.S. forces have put the Iraqi government in an awkward position. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was brought to power by Iranian-allied factions but he has also worked to maintain a good relationship with the U.S.

The U.S. has struck back at the militias just a handful of times since Oct. 27. On that day, U.S. fighter jets struck two weapons and ammunition storage sites in eastern Syria near Boukamal that were used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian-backed groups. On Nov. 8, fighter jets dropped bombs on an IRGC weapons storage facility near Maysulun in Deir el-Zour. On Nov. 12, U.S. airstrikes targeted a training facility and a safe house in the Bulbul district of Mayadin. On Dec. 26, the U.S. launched strikes on three locations in Iraq used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, and on Jan. 23, the U.S. struck three sites in Iraq, again targeting Kataib Hezbollah

CONGRESSIONAL PRESSURE

Across Capitol Hill, lawmakers are demanding retaliation.

Hawkish Congress members said Biden should directly target Tehran for the deadly attack on the base in Jordan. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., said hitting Iranian proxies hasn’t deterred them and he called on the Biden administration “to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces, but as deterrence against future aggression.”

Others said the U.S. should hit the IRGC and the Quds Force, which are spread around the region.

Most, however, leaned toward restraint, saying the administration should take a strategic and thoughtful approach to avoid escalating tensions and dragging the U.S. into another war in an election year.

“Direct confrontation with Iran will certainly lead to the deaths of more U.S. service members and could easily expand into a regional conflict,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., in a statement.

HOW BIG, HOW SOON?

The White House description of a “tiered approach” could suggest the response will be more than military. And it also may reflect concerns that members of the militia groups are reportedly going into hiding, which could make it more difficult for the U.S. to locate and strike senior commanders or key locations. As a result, the U.S. may need to stagger its response over days in order to better locate and refine targets.

Others argue that anything short of a major response will make the U.S. look weak.

“When they hear proportionality, reasonable, moderate, ‘we don’t want a regional war,’ that sounds so good in Davos, but our adversaries hear that as weakness and a green light for aggression,” said Bradley Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

ECONOMIC SANCTIONS

A non-military option is always economic sanctions — a punishment used routinely by the Biden administration and its predecessors.

Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the administration “must adopt an Iran policy focused on imposing meaningful economic and military costs on the regime.”

The U.S. could beef up sanctions aimed at cutting off the flow of funds to Iran and its proxies, particularly in Iraq. The administration has already slapped sanctions on some of the Iraqi militias — notably Kataib Hezbollah — as well as on businesses believed to be funneling dollars to the militias or to Iran.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the United States military to carry out retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups after three U.S. service members were injured in a drone attack in northern Iraq.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said one of the U.S. troops suffered critical injuries in the attack that occurred earlier Monday. The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack that utilized a one-way attack drone.

Iraqi officials said that U.S. strikes targeting militia sites early Tuesday killed one militant and wounded 18. They came at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war.

Iran announced Monday that an Israeli strike on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus killed one of its top generals, Seyed Razi Mousavi, who had been a close companion of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Soleimani was slain in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.

Iranian officials vowed revenge for the killing of Mousavi, but didn’t immediately launch a retaliatory strike. The militia attack Monday in northern Iraq was launched prior to the strike in Syria that killed Mousavi.

Biden, who was spending Christmas at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, was alerted to the attack by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan shortly after it occurred Monday and ordered the Pentagon and his top national security aides to prepare response options to the attack on an air base used by American troops in Irbil.

Sullivan consulted with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Biden’s deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, was with the president at Camp David and convened top aides to review options, according to a U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity.

Within hours, Biden convened his national security team for a call in which Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed Biden on the response options. Biden opted to target three locations used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, the official said.

The U.S. strikes were carried out at about 4:45 a.m. Tuesday in Iraq, less than 13 hours after the U.S. personnel were attacked. According to U.S. Central Command, the retaliatory strikes on the three sites “destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants.”

“The President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way,” Watson said. “The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue.”

The latest attack on U.S. troops follows months of escalating threats and actions against American forces in the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the devastating war in Gaza.

The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. Iranian-backed militias have carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria since the start of the Israel-Hamas war more than two months ago.

In November, U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and command and control node, following a short-range ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces at Al-Assad Air Base in western Iraq. Iranian-backed militias also carried out a drone attack at the same air base in October, causing minor injuries.

The U.S. has also blamed Iran, which has funded and trained the Hamas group, for attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militants against commercial and military vessels through a critical shipping choke point in the Red Sea.

The Biden administration has sought to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider regional conflict that either opens up new fronts of Israeli fighting or draws the U.S. in directly. The administration’s measured response — where not every attempt on American troops has been met with a counterattack — has drawn criticism from Republicans.

The U.S. has thousands of troops in Iraq training Iraqi forces and combating remnants of the Islamic State group, and hundreds in Syria, mostly on the counter-IS mission. They have come under dozens of attacks, though as yet none fatal, since the war began on Oct. 7, with the U.S. attributing responsibility to Iran-backed groups.

“While we do not seek to escalate conflict in the region, we are committed and fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities,” Austin said in a statement.

The clashes put the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a delicate position. He came to power in 2022 with the backing of a coalition of Iranian-backed parties, some of which are associated with the same militias launching the attacks on U.S. bases.

A group of Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces were key in the fight against Islamic State militants after the extremist group overran much of Iraq in 2014. The PMF is officially under the command of the Iraqi army, but in practice the militias operate independently.

In a statement Tuesday, Sudani condemned both the militia attack in Irbil and the U.S. response.

Attacks on “foreign diplomatic mission headquarters and sites hosting military advisers from friendly nations … infringe upon Iraq’s sovereignty and are deemed unacceptable under any circumstances,” the statement said.

However, it added that that the retaliatory strikes by the U.S. on “Iraqi military sites” — referring to the militia — “constitute a clear hostile act.” Sudani said some of those injured in the strikes were civilians.

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