The U.S. military has acknowledged the attack on a Jordanian base, with another F-15E destroyed and multiple "Black Hawk" helicopters damaged.
The U.S. military has started "drawing lots."
On the 18th, the U.S. Central Command admitted that two American service members were killed and one went missing in Iran's missile strike on Jordan, with four others injured.
Although the U.S. military insists the four injured personnel sustained only "minor" injuries and have already been discharged, some U.S. media outlets cited sources claiming the actual number of injured is higher, with at least three to five soldiers potentially unable to survive, and another 15 seriously wounded.
At the same time, both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times revealed that Iran’s attack on Jordan destroyed one U.S. "Hawk" fighter jet (F-15E) and damaged multiple "Black Hawk" helicopters.
To date, no updated satellite imagery of the Iranian strike on the U.S. military base in Jordan has been released. However, if these media reports are accurate, this would be the most severe single loss of personnel and equipment for U.S. forces since the escalation of U.S.-Iran conflict in July.
Ironically, at the beginning of the U.S.-Iran war in late February, the Pentagon deliberately relocated U.S. military personnel and assets from Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar to relatively safer locations such as Jordan and Israel—yet it turns out that the Pentagon’s so-called "safe zones" were not actually safe.
The repeated targeting of U.S. bases in Jordan and other Arab nations during this conflict also exposes a typical naivety in U.S. military planning: they consistently assumed that launching attacks from a third country’s territory would deter adversaries from retaliating against U.S. targets within that country due to diplomatic concerns or fear of war escalation. Until now, Iran has shattered this illusion with missile strikes.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1871132517639178/
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of its author.