Jordan’s painful embarrassment over the attack on the U.S. base in its territory—and its initial statement early on Jan. 28 by spokesperson Muhannad Mubaidin, who said the attack happened across the border in Syria—stem not only from the anti-Israel and anti-United States protests already occurring in Jordan, but from the fact that American operations against the Syrian government are run from the “Tower 22” base and the larger Al-Tanf base nearby in southeast Syria. These two U.S. bases of occupation are on either side of the large Rukhban refugee camp in Syria, where jihadis against the Assad government are recruited and trained, according to Syrian and Russian military authorities. The Tower 22 base is actually at the edge of a “demilitarized zone” on the Jordan-Syrian border ("demilitarized” to all but U.S. military forces, evidently), with the Rukhban refugee camp just to its northwest.
A Jan. 16 article in The Cradle on these operations had said: “Iraqi security sources are warning of an ISIS revival in the country, which coincides all too neatly with the spike in Iraqi resistance operations against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, and with widening regional instability caused by Israel’s military assault on Gaza.”
