The Journal. - A Deadly Drone Attack and Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Three U.S. service members were killed and at least 34 injured in a drone strike in Jordan on Sunday. It’s the latest in a series of attacks in the Middle East by armed militia groups linked to Iran. WSJ’s Sune Engel Rasmussen explains how Iran uses these groups to fight proxy wars and to extend its influence in the region.  Further Reading: - Three U.S. Troops Killed in Drone Attack in Jordan  - U.S. Failed to Stop Attack in Jordan After Mixup Over Drone Identity  Further Listening: - ‘We Were Attacked’: Militants Upend Global Shipping  - Will Israel Face a Second Front?  - Cheap Drones Are Transforming the Battlefield  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, there was a deadly drone strike in the Middle East. Our colleague Suna Rasmussen has been reporting on what happened. The attack happened early on Sunday, and the drone targeted a place called Tower 22, which is a small U.S. army outpost in the far northeastern quarter of Jordan, near the border with Syria and Iraq, but inside Jordanian territory. It's this kind of really barren territory. There's not much there apart from desert and then this outpost.

The attack killed three U.S. service members and injured dozens more. It's the latest in a series of attacks throughout the region since the Israel-Hamas war. So the fact that U.S. troops were targeted and killed is concerning to the U.S. and marks a new phase in this conflict. concerning to the U.S. and Marx a new phase in this conflict. A group of Iraqi militias claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Biden administration was quick to point the finger somewhere else, at Iran, for supporting the militia groups. Iran denied any link to the drone strike, but its ties to militia groups are well established.

Iran has, for the past four decades, built this kind of network of armed groups and militias across the region that it uses as kind of auxiliary forces to threaten its enemies and expand both its military footprint, but also cultural and ideological influence. Iran calls this network the Axis of Resistance. The Axis of Resistance means resistance to who? Resistance to imperialism, Western imperialism, and what Iran sees as hostile influence. And that is the United States and it's Israel. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Monday, January 29th. Coming up on the show, Iran's network of militias and the unrest in the Middle East. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express.

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Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. The axis of resistance goes back decades. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic sought to establish power in the region. Iran's goal with this axis is to extend its military, political, and ideological influence in the Middle East. And the way it works is quite interesting.

It both acts as a deterrent. So many of these militias threaten, for example, Israeli interests and can retaliate in case Iran is attacked. But they also work in a way to give Iran a measure of plausible deniability. So it kind of creates a little bit of distance between whatever military action Iran's allies take against its enemies and then Tehran itself. This network began in Lebanon, where Iran found an ally in Hezbollah. Iran really started building this alliance in the early 80s

when Israel conducted a war in southern Lebanon and occupied southern Lebanon. Israeli tanks roll into southern Lebanon. Israel's invasion was the biggest development in the area since the 73 War. And Iran went in and trained militias, gave them weapons, but also trained them to harass Israeli soldiers. And this militia, Hezbollah, later became

and is now Iran's strongest and most loyal ally in the Middle East. And it kind of found a model through Hezbollah where it could, at very low risk to itself and quite low investment, actually create quite a lot of trouble and harass its enemies, in this case, Israel. Iran provided Hezbollah with weapons, money, and training. And Hezbollah became a close ally of Iran. and training, and Hezbollah became a close ally of Iran. In the decades that followed,

Iran found more allies throughout the Middle East, like Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Houthis in Yemen. Tehran will talk about this axis as an axis of resistance, and the members of the axis 100% see themselves as part of this alliance. Do they answer to Iran? Does Iran have direct control? So that's a good question. All these groups have their own domestic agendas. And these agendas sometimes conflict with Iran's overall strategic goals. But they're also dependent on Iran in terms of funding and weapons. The groups in the Axis of Resistance are united by their opposition to the U.S. and Israel.

Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis represent the most powerful members. And smaller militias in Iraq and Syria, like the ones which carried out this weekend's drone strike, are also in the network. The U.S. has designated many of them as terrorist groups. The U.S. and Israel see this alliance of militias as one of the greatest threat to the national security of Israel and to the interests of the United States in the Middle East. There's no doubt about it. Over the past two decades, the U.S. and its biggest ally in the region, Israel, have become increasingly worried about Iran's militia network. And they've tried to curb its power.

And the U.S. has tried different ways of forcing Iran to roll it back, through sanctions, for example. But the most dramatic thing that happened was in early 2020 when a U.S. airstrike killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of what's called the Quds Force. So he was like the mastermind of this alliance of militias. And he was killed in an airstrike outside the airport in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. The Pentagon confirmed the U.S. military carried out the attack. Qasem Soleimani was one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East and had been the top military man in Iran for more than 20 years. This was a completely unprecedented action, and the Iranians saw it almost as a declaration of war. And with that strike, the U.S. hoped that Iran would sort of be forced or less capable of

running this axis of militias around the Middle East. So did it work? Was it able to reduce Iran's ability to direct these militias? Well, after Soleimani's death, he was replaced by his deputy, a man called Ismail Kani, who used to be responsible for the Revolutionary Guards operations in Afghanistan. Ghani, his successor, has proven very capable of filling that role. And the axis of resistance has since Soleimani's death sort of consolidated. And that is partly due to Ghani's ability to step in and fill the void that Soleimani left. to step in and fill the void that Soleimani left.

So Soleimani's assassination in some ways strengthened the axis of resistance. I mean, there's certainly an argument to be made that the killing of Soleimani strengthened the resolve in Iran, that they were fighting the right fight and the axis of resistance was an effective tool to promote its own interest in the region because the U.S. had to resort to something as dramatic as assassinating Qasem Soleimani. And Iran doesn't seem to rely any less on the Axis. But the killing of Soleimani was just the first in a string of assassinations that rocked Iran, killing military commanders and a top nuclear scientist. Iranian officials say Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was ambushed in his car by what they call

armed terrorists, spraying the windshield with bullets. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital. He's the man Western intelligence think was behind the country's covert nuclear weapons program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin... Israel was presumed to be behind the assassinations, but it hasn't confirmed or denied involvement. And then, last October, a key member of Iran's Axis of Resistance carried out the biggest attack on Israel in decades. By land, sea and air, Hamas militants broke through the border, ground forces storming into residential neighborhoods, murdering civilians and taking others hostage. The scale of it was unlike anything we've seen, and it dealt the worst single blow to the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

The question then is, what role did Iran play in planning and carrying out this attack? That's next. Summer is like a cocktail. It has to be mixed just right. Start with a handful of great friends. Now, add your favorite music. And then, finally, add Bacardi Rum. Shake it together.

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Rum 40% alcohol by volume. Travel better with Air Canada. You can enjoy free beer, wine, and premium snacks in economy class. Now extended to flights within Canada and the U.S. Cheers to taking off this summer. More details at aircanada.com. After the attacks in Israel on October 7th, Suna and his colleagues tried to find out if Iran was directly involved in planning the attack.

And the answer was murky. There's no doubt that Hamas was only able to carry out this attack on Israel due to assistance through many years from Iran. Hamas in Gaza has been under a very tight blockade. It doesn't have a lot of foreign backers. And the reason that Hamas today is as heavily armed as it is and relatively well-trained is because of assistance largely from Iran. It's its main foreign sponsor. Now, that's not the same as saying that Iran planned the attack on October 7th or indeed advised Hamas to go through with it. In response to the attack, Israel pledged to destroy Hamas

and unleashed a massive bombing campaign in Gaza. This is the first time where we see one of the members of this alliance, Hamas, being at the risk of eradication. And Iran had to make a choice of whether to go in and back them at great risk to itself or risk the annihilation of one of its key members of its alliance. In November, Hamas leaders traveled to Tehran for a meeting with Iran's supreme leader, seeking support. After the meeting, Iran's leadership relayed its position through state media. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that while Iran supported

and celebrated Hamas' attack on Israel, this was not Iran's doing, so they would not get further involved in the war. And this, I think, was a very clear signal to Hamas that you are largely on your own and we're not going to go in and start a war with Israel on your behalf. and we're not going to go in and start a war with Israel on your behalf. But I also think that Hamas must have expected this somehow.

I think the contract that these militias have with Iran is that they get weapons, they get advice, they get money, and then they also get quite a lot of agency to do their own thing and their own domestic purposes. In return, Iran is not going to start a potentially existential war to bail them out when they get into trouble. Throughout the region, Iran is continuing to support Axis militias,

which are carrying out attacks against Western interests. In no place is that more evident than the Red Sea, where the Houthi rebels have been attacking cargo ships. Yemen's Houthi rebels say they've seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Red Sea. The Iranian-backed groups say that any Israel-linked vessel is a legitimate target given the ongoing war in Gaza and what they call ugly crimes in the occupied West Bank. According to Western officials, Iran is sending advisers and sophisticated weapons to the Houthis, like drone jammers and parts of long-range rockets and missiles. What's interesting about the Houthis is that normally in recent years they haven't actually seemed that interested in Israel and what happens with the Palestinians. But now they have fired rockets at southern Israel and they have attacked shipping

in the Red Sea, ostensibly because Israel is bombing Gaza. They've said they won't stop the attacks until Israel stops bombing Gaza. The U.S. and the U.K. have launched strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, targeting missile depots and an underground weapons storage facility. Yemen, targeting missile depots and an underground weapons storage facility. I think that's an illustration of just how seriously the Biden administration takes the threat from the Houthis to global shipping. And I think the fact that the U.S. has deployed forces in the Red Sea and has struck Houthi positions inside Yemen, that is kind of unprecedented. But at the same time, it hasn't really stopped the Houthis from attacking vessels, including American vessels in the Red Sea.

How do you see these kind of disparate attacks that are happening now around the region? This, to my knowledge, is the most sort of coordinated response we've seen across the axis of resistance probably ever. We've seen Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthi rebels all at the same time engaged in more or less the same level of harassment and attacks against Israel and American interests. And this, to me, illustrates that there is a lot of coordination happening. And this, to me, illustrates that there is a lot of coordination happening. And I think the Iranians will definitely be very, very aware of the dangers inherent in any kind of escalation.

But this weekend, the situation escalated further, when three U.S. service members were killed in that drone strike. And the question then is, did Iran play a role in planning and conducting these attacks? What has Iran said? Iran has denied any link with these attacks. They say that the attacks were part of the resistance against U.S. presence in the region, but attacks on U.S. troops from militias in Iraq and Syria have been ongoing for years, and they're part of sort of the attempts by this alliance to push the U.S. out. Why is this attack different from the other ones? Because this attack killed three U.S. soldiers, and that is a red line for the Biden administration. President Biden has said that the U.S. will respond in a manner in the time of his choosing, but it will be a forceful response. I think what we're all sort of waiting to see now is what target the U.S. chooses and what kind of attack will unfold.

But I think we should expect a forceful response from the Biden administration. These militias in the region, are they acting in Iran's interest? That's a good question, Kate. I think it depends on who you ask in Iran, to be honest. The Iranian security establishment is as divided as security establishments anywhere else. And there are those in Iran who would like to see a direct confrontation with the U.S. there are those in Iran who would like to see a direct confrontation with the U.S. I think the prevailing notion though in Iran is that Iran wouldn't gain anything from a direct military confrontation with the U.S. or with Israel for that matter and for that reason an attack like

this any attack that kind of dials up the risk of a direct war with the U.S., could be seen to be against Iranian interests. What's the tightrope that Iran is walking right now? Iran is keen to not show any weakness to its enemies. And that means putting up a fierce resistance against what it sees as hostile American and Israeli influence in the region. And if it manages to do that, it will have scored a significant political victory in

the Middle East. But at the same time, Iran doesn't want to escalate things into a full-blown war with the U.S. So that's kind of the balance that it has to strike here. That's all for today, Monday, January 29th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Michael Gordon and Nancy Youssef. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.