Iran denies involvement in fatal attack on US troops

Iranian officials on Monday denied involvement in a fatal attack over the weekend on a U.S. base that killed three American troops.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the various groups backed by Tehran in the Middle East do not take direct orders from Iran, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.

"The Islamic Republic has no involvement in the resistance groups’ decisions on the way they support the Palestinian nation or defend themselves and the people of their countries in the face of any aggression and occupation," Kanaani said in a statement.

A drone strike on Sunday killed three U.S. service members and injured another two dozen at the Tower 22 base in Jordan, which is close to the southeastern border with Syria.

President Biden blamed the attack on "radical Iran-backed militant groups" and vowed the U.S. would respond.

The U.S. has battled Iranian-backed militants across the Middle East since late October, following the Israeli war against the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Iranian-supported militias have attacked U.S. bases more than 150 times in Iraq and Syria, while another proxy group backed by Tehran, the Houthis, are fighting American forces in the Red Sea and in Yemen.

Sunday's attack marks a major escalation in the battling, with the first U.S. casualties since the fighting started. Some outraged Republican lawmakers have called for retaliation against Iran.

But Iranian spokesperson Kanaani on Monday called the accusations that Tehran was involved in the Jordan attack "baseless."

Kananni said the accusations were "a blame game and a plot by those who try to protect their own interests and cover up their problems by dragging the U.S. into a new conflict in the region and provoking it to intensify the crisis."

Iran's representatives at the United Nations have also denied the charges that Tehran had anything to do with the Jordan attack.