The massive US military buildup in the Middle East, including warships, fighter jets, and refueling aircraft, lays the foundation for a potentially sustained campaign against Iran — should President Donald Trump give the order.
Trump — who ordered strikes on Iran last year — has repeatedly threatened Tehran with further military action if ongoing talks do not reach a replacement for the nuclear deal the US president tore up in 2018, during his first term in office.
CNN and CBS reported Wednesday that the US military will be ready to launch strikes against Iran as early as this weekend, though Trump has reportedly not made a final decision yet.
The presence of “so much firepower…in the region creates a momentum of its own,” said Susan Ziadeh, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Sometimes that momentum is a little hard to just put the brakes on and say, that’s it, we’re not doing anything,” Ziadeh said during a panel discussion Wednesday.
Washington currently has 13 warships in the Middle East: one aircraft carrier — the USS Abraham Lincoln — nine destroyers and three littoral combat ships, with more on the way, according to a US official.
The USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest aircraft carrier — is currently in the Atlantic Ocean en route from the Caribbean to the Middle East, after being ordered there by Trump earlier this month. It is accompanied by three destroyers.
It is rare for there to be two US aircraft carriers — which carry dozens of warplanes and are crewed by thousands of sailors — in the Middle East.
The United States had two of the massive warships in the region in June last year when it targeted three Iranian nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day campaign of strikes on Iran.
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Source: Insider Paper
