THE OPERATION TITLE IS INAUSPICIOUS.

Illinois National Guard troops are being called up to ship out to the Middle East in the wake of that drone attack on a base in Jordan that killed three of their comrades from Georgia.

In a press release Monday, the Defense Department said Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia, died Jan. 28, 2024, in Jordan. The attack occurred when "a one-way unmanned aerial system (OWUAS) impacted their container housing units," the Pentagon said.

The operation is SPARTAN SHIELD.  Spartan mothers supposedly advised their sons, "Come back with your shield or on it."  With the current crew advising National Command Authority, there are likely to be more of our neighbors coming back on their shields.  "Biden weighs high-stakes response to Iran after US troops killed in Jordan."

“We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate. But we will absolutely do what is required to protect ourselves … and to respond appropriately to these attacks,” national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Monday.

Biden has pledged to respond to the latest attacks in a “time and manner of our choosing.”

The president met Monday with members of his national security team, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who returned to the Pentagon for the first time since undergoing surgery for prostate cancer.

Kirby emphasized that the U.S. is not looking for a war with Iran, but when asked if Biden is considering a strike inside the country, he would not say whether it was on the table.

“This attack over the weekend was escalatory, make no mistake about it. And it requires a response, make no mistake about that,” he said. “I will not get ahead of the president’s decisionmaking.”

American troops have come under fire from Iranian-backed groups more than 160 times since late October.

The White House has in recent weeks launched precision strikes targeting Iranian-backed militia targets and struck back against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen after the rebel group targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

But the death of U.S. troops will increase the stakes for Biden, particularly among Republican defense hawks in Congress who are already calling for retaliation, including inside Iran.

Dither, dither, dither.  "Time and manner of our choosing" is classic saber-rattling.  Who was it said "rattling a saber makes noise, drawing it doesn't have to."

Mr Kirby, "Not looking for a war?"  Well, no, but war has been looking for you and all the other vicars of vacillation in the Jarrett regency, perhaps since 1979, surely since 2003, and maybe it is time to give the mullahs a little nudge and when the Iranian people keep pushing, help them out.

Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, said if the U.S. wants to hold Iran responsible, it may target sites or facilities in Iraq or Syria used by the Iranian military wing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But the U.S. will likely refrain from targeting Iranian soil, he added.

“The dilemma here for the Biden administration is how to bloody Iran’s nose, which is something that this attack serves and calls for, but to do so without actually touching Iran’s nose,” Vaez said. “They don’t want to have to strike Iran on its own territory. And that’s a very difficult needle to thread.”

Particularly when the cookie-pushers are in the saddle with their hand-wringing over proportionality.  David Sanger of TASS is representative.

President Joe Biden could order strikes on the proxy forces, a major escalation of the whack-a-mole attacks it has conducted in recent weeks in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. So far, those attacks have put a dent into the abilities of the Iranian-backed groups that have mounted more than 160 attacks. But they have failed, as Biden himself noted 10 days ago, to deter those groups.

Biden could decide to go after the Iranian suppliers of drones and missiles, perhaps including inside Iranian territory, which poses a much higher risk. His first targets could well be members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, many of whom are based in Syria and Iraq. Depending on how these strikes are conducted, it could open another front in the war, with a far more powerful adversary, and trigger Iran to accelerate its nuclear program.

In short, it would force Biden to do everything he has been trying so far to avoid.

Dementia Joe is more confident demonizing his own citizens than he is keeping his troops safe.  When somebody keeps annoying you, sometimes the best thing to do is haul off and smack him.

There are options in between, officials say, and strikes could be combined with back-channel messaging to the Iranians that they should absorb the hit and not escalate. Such signaling has been successful before, including after the U.S.-ordered killing of Qassem Soleimani, the head of its powerful Quds Force, in 2020. Then, as now, there were fears of an all-out war in the Middle East that would pit the United States and its allies against Iran and its proxies. Both sides backed away.

But the brew of political pressures, military calculations and regional fragility is quite different today from four years ago, even though evidence suggests that Iran does not want to engage directly in war either, especially when its own economy is weak.

“There are no good choices, but the deaths and wounds of so many U.S. troops and SEALs demand a strong response,” said James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who now works for the Carlyle Group, a global investment firm.

“A multiday air campaign against all proxies, coupled with a ‘last chance warning’ to Iran is warranted,” he said. “The Pentagon should be creating options that go directly against Iranian weapons production facilities, naval assets and intelligence systems in case the mullahs want to go another round. A strong offensive cyberattack would be another viable option, either alone or in conjunction with kinetic strikes.”

Because Iran has been an adversary for so long, across eight presidencies, there is no shortage of such options. The United States has identified the major drone-making factories, and their overseas suppliers, that are fueling the Russian attacks in Ukraine and supplying Hezbollah, the Houthis and other proxy groups. (It is not yet clear whether the drone, or drones, that killed the Americans in Jordan on Sunday were Iranian made, but that was the working assumption of U.S. officials.)

U.S. forces have mapped out strikes on Iranian missile sites and air bases in case a conflict broke out between Iran and Israel. There was even a detailed cyberattack option against Iran, code-named “Nitro Zeus,” to disable Iran’s air defenses, communications systems and crucial parts of its power grid. That plan was shelved in 2015 after Iran and six other nations struck a nuclear deal. Israel has conspicuously practiced bombing runs, simulating attacks on the Natanz nuclear enrichment site and its deep-underground alternative site, called Fordow.

It might be, as Propagandist Sanger notes, that nobody wants to go there. We might be headed there, all the same.

Biden is running out of middle-ground options. Sanctions have been exhausted; there is barely a sector of the Iranian economy that the United States and Europe are not already punishing, and China continues to buy up Iranian oil. He could approve “strike packages” against a variety of proxies, but that would embolden some of them, and give some of them the status they crave as legitimate U.S. enemies.

And, following Stavridis’ suggestion, it could look to cyberattacks, more stealthy, deniable ways to make a point. But the lesson of the past decade of cyberconflict with Iran — in both directions — is that it looks easier in the movies than in reality. Gaining access to critical networks is hard, and having lasting impact is even harder. The most famous American-Israeli cyberattack on Iran, aimed at its nuclear centrifuges 15 years ago, slowed the nuclear program for a year or two but did not put it out of business.

And that is Biden’s challenge now: In the middle of an election, with two wars underway, he needs to put Iran’s sponsorship of attacks on Americans out of business — without starting another war.

Let us take the tragic vision.  We are already in a war.  And more of our troops will come home on their shields, because National Command Authority look to "proportional" and "deniable" responses, rather than uproot the nettle once and for all.