Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

The news briefing has turned a bit tense - and Kirby is facing increasingly heated questions from members of the White House press corps about the US response to the drone attack in Syria.

Just a few minutes ago, Kirby was forced to address US domestic considerations about a wider war in the Middle East, telling reporters that the president "is not looking at polls or at the electoral calendar" as he weighs his military options.

"He's not looking at political calculations....as he works to protect our troops," he said.

Kirby has said that Biden has "the authority" to respond and would coordinate with Congress to keep them informed about future military operations.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

Kirby has defended previous US airstrikes against Iran-backed armed groups in Syria and Iraq, saying that they had already had some success "degrading and disrupting" their capabilities ahead of the recent attack.

"Clearly, they have decided to keep conducting those attacks, and now it's had lethal consequences," he said. "The attacks need to stop."

While he declined to comment on whether he believes Iran's government wants a wider war, he said he believes that its Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, believes that continuing these attacks through its proxies is worth the risk.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

While the US has vowed a response, Kirby has - repeatedly - said that the US is not seeking a wider military confrontation with Iran.

When asked whether the White House and Pentagon are looking at potential targets within Iran's borders, Kirby said only that the US is "not looking for a war with Iran".

In his remarks, however, Kirby said Iran is responsible for training, encouraging and organising the armed groups operating in Iraq and Syria that conducted the drone strike against US troops in Jordan.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

National security spokesman Kirby again declines to offer any specifics on the US response to the attack, noting only that President Biden has so far held two meetings on the matter.

"I'm not going to telegraph punches," he says. "The president will choose for himself how he wants to respond."

Kirby adds that the government's response will be "fully cognisant" of the fact that US troops have been killed, which he said is a "fundamentally different" escalation.

The number of wounded may rise as more troops exhibit symptoms of traumatic brain injuries, or TBI, he adds.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

The White House's daily news briefing has just begun - and immediately, we've seen Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby face questions about the attack.

In his opening remarks, Kirby sent condolences to the families of the fallen US soldiers and said that they were involved in a "vital" counter-Islamic State (IS) mission in the region.

"We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate," he said. "But we will absolutely do what is required to protect ourselves."

He has so far declined to "telegraph" what the US would do in response.

The attack - and potential US response - is likely to take up most of today's news briefing. It's the only thing I've heard reporters discussing here at the White House today.

Nomia Iqbal
Reporting from Washington

Image source, Reuters

President Biden has said the US will respond at a time and place of its choosing - but what that looks like will be carefully calculated.

In the last few months Washington and Tehran have repeatedly said they don't want to escalate tensions in the region.

However there is pressure on Biden's administration to react forcefully.

Some politicians are calling for strikes against Iranian targets whilst others in the Republican Party want Biden to go further and hit Iran directly.

The president who is facing a tough re-election race potentially against Donald Trump is now looking at a difficult decision as an incumbent leader: take possible military action to punish the attackers but avoid triggering a wider war.

In a few moments, we'll hear the White House's daily press briefing - with the questions likely to focus on this drone attack. Watch along by pressing Play at the top of this page.

Here's a look now at some of the reaction to the deadly strike on a US military base in Jordan from Democrats - after we heard from some Republicans earlier criticising Joe Biden.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries are calling for the US to hold those responsible for the attack "accountable".

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal uses similar language, writing on X, external that "a strong, surgical response is vital against Iran-backed forces".

"Iran remains responsible for its proxies and will be held accountable," he adds.

Senator Ben Cardin, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says in a statement that the attack "cannot go unanswered".

“This attack on US and coalition troops in Jordan - our steadfast regional partner - is an escalation, and cannot go unanswered," he says. "I support President Biden in a deliberate and proportionate response.”

This is where things stand following a drone attack at a US base in Jordan near the Syrian border, which killed three American troops said to be in their sleeping quarters at the time:

• The White House has blamed Iran-backed militants for Sunday's attack, with national security spokesperson John Kirby vowing a "very consequential response" to the drone attack, in an interview with CNN
• US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed "outrage and sorrow [for] the deaths of three brave" soldiers, adding that the administration will take "all necessary actions to defend the US and our troops"
• Iran denied that it was behind the attack, calling the accusations "baseless" and saying it was "not involved in the decision making of resistance groups"
• In addition to those killed, US officials said at least 34 others had been injured. Eight were evacuated for medical treatment outside of the base, and some are in critical but stable condition
• A militia group based in Iraq - the Islamic Resistance - has claimed responsibility for the attack
• Britain announced a new set of sanctions, external, in coordination with the US, aimed at tackling people who they say pose an "unacceptable threat to the UK's security" from Iran

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

We've just heard from the White House, which confirmed that President Joe Biden met with members of his national security team earlier today to discuss the attack in Jordan.

Among those present were national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, director of national intelligence Avril Haines and Brett McGurk, the National Security Council's coordinator for the Middle East.

No further details on the meeting were provided - but we are sure to hear more at 13:30 EST (18:30 GMT) when press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby hold today's press briefing.

Stay with us for more updates - or you can watch along by pressing Play at the top of this page.

US President Joe Biden's Republican rivals for the presidency, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, have called the attack an example the elder statesman's "weakness".

Trump, the Republican front-runner, said it "marks a horrible day for America" and "this brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden's weakness and surrender".

Haley, former UN ambassador, asked on X, formerly known as Twitter: "Why is Biden still refusing to enforce sanctions on Iran? We have to drain every dollar to stop Iran’s terrorism."

And on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, some Republican lawmakers have echoed Trump and Haley's disapproval. US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the US "cannot afford to keep responding to this violent aggression with hesitation and half-measures".

"The entire world now watches for signs that the president is finally prepared to exercise American strength to compel Iran to change its behaviour," he said in a statement.

And Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said: "America must send a crystal clear message across the globe that attacks on our troops will not be tolerated."

Iran's denials will not deter US responsepublished at 17:15 Greenwich Mean Time 29 January

17:15 GMT 29 January

Frank Gardner
BBC News, Security Correspondent

Iran’s denials are unlikely to be believed by Western governments and their allies in the Middle East.

Even if Tehran did not directly order the attack on a US military base in Jordan, it has clear, indisputable links to those who carried it out.

The group calling itself "the Islamic Resistance in Iraq" is part of a broad network of Iranian-backed militias that have been armed, funded and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Operating in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, they are opposed to both Israel and the US military presence in the region.

There have been frequent drone attacks by Iranian-backed militias on US bases but this one is by far the most serious. How Washington now responds will dictate if these clashes are going to escalate further.

Image source, EPA

We heard from US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin a short while ago who, giving an update on the White House's position, said the Biden administration will take "all necessary actions" to defend US troops.

He also expressed his "outrage and sorrow [for] the deaths of three brave US troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded".

"The president and I will not tolerate attacks on US forces and we will take all necessary actions to defend the US and our troops," he told reporters at the Pentagon.

Around four miles away, all eyes are on the White House to see how President Joe Biden might respond. You can read all about that here..

Feras Kilani
BBC Arabic’s special correspondent

Image source, Reuters

The US military base, which became known as Tower 22, was supposed to remain secret, and neither Jordan nor the US would disclose its presence inside Jordanian territory.

But after it was targeted by a drone over the weekend, the Pentagon has been forced for the first time to reveal the location of the base, established in 2016.

In 2017 I was given rare access to visit the base but was firmly told no filming was allowed.

We flew there by helicopter from a Jordanian military base in Amman. From the air, it was clear how close the base was to the Syrian border. On the other side, I saw thousands of improvised tents put up in the middle of the desert by displaced Syrians fleeing the Islamic State group (IS).

The small base was surrounded by fortified barbed wire-topped walls with military cameras, and protected by the Jordanian army from all sides. I noticed that some of the personnel were in civilian clothes, and saw light vehicles, bunkers and communications towers.

The area, including the camp, was known as Rukban. Shia militia groups and the Syrian army were getting closer in their fight against IS. And the danger of attacks by the jihadist extremist group was still high.

IS had targeted the American base in June 2016 with a car bomb, killing six Jordanian soldiers who were guarding the entrance to the base. The Jordanian army said at the time that it was its base.

The UK has today announced a new set of sanctions, external aimed at tackling people who they say pose an "unacceptable threat to the UK's security" from Iran.

Two Iranian officials accused of being behind a threat to kill on UK soil have been hit with asset freezes, as well as a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds said to have targeted people in Britain.

Four other Iran-linked individuals, including two Turkish nationals, accused of killing an Iranian dissident in Istanbul have also been hit with sanctions.

An Iranian said to be the head of an international drug and trafficking cartel was also targeted for allegedly planning on conducting overseas attacks.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

The US says its response "will come at a time and place of its choosing".

It's not clear how far the US may go, but the situation is a reminder of what happened after the December 2019 attacks, when an Iraqi militia fired rockets at a US base in Kirkuk, killing an American contractor.

After that attack, the US retaliated by carrying out a massive airstrike on a militia base on the Iraq-Syria border, killing 25 members.

The funeral for them sparked a protest by pro-Iran Shia militia members and supporters, who stormed the American embassy in Baghdad.

This chain of events played a major role in former President Donald Trump’s decision to give a green light to assassinate one of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) top commanders, Gen Qasem Soleimani.

Both the US and Iran have repeatedly said in the past few months that they don’t seek further escalations in the region.

Of course there will be a lot of calculations and possible exchanges of messages behind the scenes between Tehran and Washington, but what happened in Tower 22 is making it more difficult for the US to limit its response only to the "usual suspects".

The question remains, will the US do something similar this time as the pressure mounts on the Biden administration to respond directly to Iran as a supporter of these groups?

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

Good morning from the White House in Washington DC - where officials are almost certainly going to face repeated questions today about the attack in Jordan and what the US response will be.

So far, President Biden has no public events on his schedule, although we do know that he will receive his daily brief from intelligence officials at about 11:00 EST (16:00 GMT).

Later in the day, at 13:30 EST, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby will hold a press briefing.

The briefing comes as the administration comes under pressure to respond forcefully to the attack, with some lawmakers and current and former officials calling for strikes against Iranian targets.

Mick Mulroy, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, told the BBC he believes that the US should respond with "more force than we have used to date".

"It's been clear that the US does not want this war in Gaza to expand in the region. It's also been clear that Iran does want it to expand," he said. "The only thing they understand is force. It's time to use it."

"I believe that even targets inside Iran are being included as options to the White House from the Pentagon," he added.

Since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, US bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked around 150 times, according to US officials.

The map below shows which bases have been more frequent targets since 18 October.

Image source, .

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

This attack is significant both because of its location and the casualties it's left.

In a statement posted on Telegram, a group called “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” claimed responsibility for the attacks on three US bases and the deaths of three US service members.

The group itself emerged right after the beginning of Israel’s bombardment in Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October.

"Islamic Resistance in Iraq" is believed to be an umbrella term for various Shia militia groups such as Kataib Hezbollah, Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, that have a long history of targeting US bases in Iraq and Syria.

The point of creating these ghost groups is to make it difficult for Washington to pin the attacks on a specific culprit.

Regardless, there are always “usual suspects” in such attacks. Kataib Hezbollah is one of the most secretive and more elite Shia militias allied with Iran and since the Israel-Hamas conflict began in October. The US has already targeted the group several times after attacks on US troops.

Here is another question from our YQA session, which aired on the BBC News channel just after 12:30 GMT, and which you can watch back on iPlayer.

Professor Gerges is asked how the US will ensure that its response to the attacks is proportionate and non-escalatory but also a deterrent.

“[That will] be very difficult to achieve,” he says.

“The big point here is that President Biden’s strategy of deterrence has failed. The strategy – the American strategy – has been for the past three months or so to prevent the expansion and the escalation of conflict from Gaza to neighbouring countries.

“You have now open fronts on the Lebanese-Israeli front, in Syria, in Iraq, the Red Sea.”

Kasra Naji
Special Correspondent, BBC Persian TV

Iran is obviously bracing itself for the US reaction, although few people believe that the US may react by attacking targets on Iranian soil.

That would be ratcheting up the tensions in the region to a new and very dangerous level that could perhaps extend war to the whole region.

Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the revolutionary guard, who are directly managing Iran's Middle Eastern policies, have been quiet so far.

The last time Iran and the US came to blows directly was in the 1980s when the US and Iran were involved in military action against each other in the waters of the Persian Gulf, where Iran's ships and oil platforms were targeted.

Image source, EPA

For the moment, the most obvious sign of a change in Iran is sudden depreciation of the value of the Iranian rial by more than 6% on the news of the killing of three US servicemen at a US base in Jordan - an attack the US has blamed on Iranian-backed militias.

The depreciation shows that the market in Iran foresees a turbulent time ahead. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman has said the attack on the US servicemen has nothing to do with Iran, and the militias of what it describes as the Axis of Resistance do not receive their orders from Iran.

But this denial is not going to convince many people, and certainly not the US which has witnessed more than eighty attacks on its bases in the region in the past three-and-a-half months alone - since the Israel-Gaza war.

Iran has hoped this plausible deniability will keep it out of trouble, but it is realising that this strategy can only work for a time, and sooner or later, few people come to believe that it has been an innocent bystander.