ATHENS — For America and much of the world, the Iranian menace to global peace and security is getting more real by the day, and the whispers that something must be done about it soon are growing louder at home and abroad.

President Biden is now considering several options to respond to an attack on its base in the Middle East, including the possibility of a covert operation against Iran, Bloomberg has reported, citing an “unnamed person familiar with the U.S. position.”

Three American service members were killed and at least 34 service members were injured in what the United States Central Command calls a “one-way attack” by a drone on a base in eastern Jordan. The attack was orchestrated by what Mr. Biden terms “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”

According to the source close to the private discussion cited by Bloomberg, the attack “will provoke a more decisive response” from Washington, which would surpass in scale anything it has done since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip as Israel works to dismantle Hamas there since that terrorist group’s October 7 attacks against Israel. 

Among the possible responses, the source cites “a covert operation in which the United States will strike Iran.” At the same time, Washington will not announce its participation in such an action, should one take place. The possibility has also reportedly been raised that America could directly attack Iranian officials.

Regardless of what Washington does, Mr. Biden will have to make one of the most important decisions of his term. This runs the risk of sparking an immediate confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

Iran’s hardline regime has predictably denied American and British accusations that it was behind the deadly drone strike. On Monday Tehran’s official IRNA news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, as saying, “These claims are made with specific political goals to reverse the realities of the region.”

Earlier, though, Iran’s mission to the UN made a seemingly contradictory statement: “Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the attack on the US base,” that statement said, adding, “There is a conflict between US forces and resistance groups in the region, which reciprocate retaliatory attacks.”

Mr. Kanaani, for his part, stated that such “resistance groups” do not take orders from Iran. The Iranian escalation against America on land follows weeks of similar malign activity by sea. Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have for weeks now been firing armed drones and missiles at both naval and commercial vessels in the Red Sea, imperiling the lives of U.S. servicemen and disrupting global maritime shipping. 

On Sunday, the Houthis announced that they launched a missile attack on an American naval vessel in the Gulf of Aden, United States Ship Lewis B. Puller*, but details were sketchy as of Monday morning.  Meanwhile the British ministry of defense confirmed on Sunday that a British warship, the HMS Diamond, fired a missile at a Houthi drone that had targeted it. 

Last week Washington and London launched joint airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, making it the eighth time American forces had struck Houthi targets, and the second time Britain was involved.

Against the backdrop of Sunday’s attack and Iran’s stubborn refusal to de-escalate, the pressure will be  on the White House to take decisive action in the coming days.

The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has already said that Iran should be made to pay “serious, crippling costs” for its actions, “not only on frontline terrorist proxies, but on their Iranian sponsors who wear American blood as a badge of honor.”

If Mr. Biden had been hoping for a smooth home stretch for the remainder of his sojourn in the Oval Office before electoral politics moves to the center of his agenda, fate may have other plans in store. 

Those include a likely collision of the political with the personal, as some Republicans are already making clear.  Senator Cotton stated that “the only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” adding, “Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief.”

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* Named for Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller.