The Biden administration and US military leaders are increasingly concerned about rising tensions with Iran, and they are looking at the new year as a potential flashpoint, NBC News reported quoting defense and administration officials familiar with the matter. The growing confrontation with Iran has prompted a debate inside the administration about how to respond to attacks and provocative acts by Iran and its proxies in the region, current and former US officials said. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet Wednesday with Israeli officials including Naftali Bennett, with Iran "very high on the agenda," a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Monday evening. Tensions ratcheted up after the attack on the US military base known as At Tanf Garrison in southern Syria on Oct. 20, when five so-called suicide drones packed with explosives and shrapnel were launched at the base. No US troops were killed in the assault, but several structures were badly damaged. Three US defense officials and two administration officials said Iran was behind the attack and that it launched it through proxy forces with the intention of killing US troops. Iran launched the attack in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed and wounded several Iranian citizens, the US officials said. The US military had warning that the drones were inbound, and it was able to move most of the 200 US soldiers away from the base to avoid any casualties, according to the five officials. The At Tanf base was threatened again this week, when two drones breached the immediate area around the garrison. A British fighter jet fired an air-to-air missile to shoot down one drone, while the other flew away, The attack on At Tanf and other incidents — including a drone assault on a commercial oil tanker, the MT Mercer Street, in August off Oman, which the US and Britain blamed on Iran — have sparked a debate inside and outside the administration about how to deter Iran without igniting an all-out war, with some senior military officers favoring a tougher line, according to two current and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. Asked for comment, the White House referred NBC News to a conference call it conducted last week, when a senior administration official said that after months of attacks by Iran against Americans in Iraq under the Trump, the Biden administration "used a combination of deterrence, including two rounds of airstrikes, and also a lot of diplomacy to both deter and also de-escalate some of these tensions." One of the main reasons U.S. officials believe Iran and Iranian-backed groups will increase attacks against US troops in Iraq and Syria around the new year is that the US military is scheduled to officially end its combat mission in Iraq on Dec. 31, according to an agreement between the US and Iraq. The commander of Iran's Quds Force, Sardar Qaani, warned Americans this month that it will take action against U.S. troops still in the region after the deadline. "After January 1st, all bets are off," a US defense official said. US officials are also watching the second anniversary on Jan. 3 of the US assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, then the leader of the Quds Force, as another possible flashpoint. "We are aware of potential threats that could increase in the coming weeks, and we are making sure we are going to be ready for them," an administration official said. Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who tracks Iranian-backed militia activity, said he expects the militias to mark the anniversary of Soleimani's death and the new year, when they believe U.S. troops should be completely withdrawn from the country. But he said it is unclear how far they will go. For the US and its allies, the question of how best to respond to Iran and its proxies is closely tied to efforts to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy and economic pressure. Some US officials worry that retaliating to every provocative Iranian action could prove counterproductive and derail talks between Iran and world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear agreement. But others, including former Democratic lawmakers and some prominent former Obama administration officials, argue that only the threat of military force will ensure that diplomacy succeeds. "Without convincing Iran it will suffer severe consequences if it stays on its current path, there is little reason to hope for the success of diplomacy," said a statement released Friday by former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, former Democratic lawmakers Jane Harman and Howard Berman, retired Gen. David Petraeus, former senior diplomat Dennis Ross and commentator Robert Satloff. Talks in Vienna on the nuclear accord have stalled since the election of a hard-line cleric, Ebrahim Raisi, as Iran's president in June. Iran and the other parties finally agreed to an agenda for the discussions on Friday, but US and European officials struck a pessimistic tone. "So we made some progress, not enough, certainly, at a pace that will not be sufficient to get to where we need to go before Iran's nuclear advances render the JCPOA a corpse that cannot be revived," a senior State Department official told reporters Friday. "There is a diplomatic path. It is a preferred path," the State Department official said. "If it's not chosen, then unfortunately, we will have to look at other tools to ensure that the president's goal, his commitment, which is that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapon, is realized." Another administration official said that the Biden administration is not going to allow a nuclear Iran on it watch and that it will have to act soon. "The options are closing down, and people are starting to see that," the administration official said.
