A significant amount of US military power has been on the move over this past week, including several B-2 strategic bombers which have landed at the US military base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean just over 2,000 miles southeast of Iran. According to press reports this is the most significant B-2 presence on the Island in nearly half a decade. In addition flight trackers are showing increased activity by at least nine KC-135R refueling aircraft in the region. Several C-17 cargo planes have also been spotted by satellites on the Island.
The US President has ordered US Carrier Strike Group Carl Vinson to the Mideast.
While the Administration continues to escalate its illegal bombing campaign against Yemen – some are reporting more than 60 strikes today alone and President Trump promises that they will continue “for a long time” – speculation is increasing that the Diego Garcia build-up is the beginning of the long process of positioning US military muscle for an attack on Iran.
President Trump today warned although his “big preference is we work it out with Iran…if we don’t work it out, bad bad things are gonna happen with Iran.”
So is the US president elected with the promise to end wars rather than start them ready to launch a war against the modern, technologically-advanced nation of 90 million with an extremely complicated terrain, advanced military capabilities, and a newly-signed strategic partnership treaty with Russia?
No one knows.
Congress seems uninterested in its Constitutional obligation to serve as the red light or green light for war – there has been nary a peep over Trump’s bombing of Yemen to, as his top aides were caught saying, “send a message.” Does anyone believe they will come out of their slumber as Hegseth, Waltz, Rubio, and the rest of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight (or at least plan a war on Signal straight) position the US for an attack on Iran?
Trump has continued – and perhaps even accelerated – in his second term a pattern of extreme rhetorical escalation followed by retrenchment possibly as a means of gaining the attention of the party he is addressing. For example he warned Russia earlier this month that he would increase sanctions and destroy its economy before backing down to a series of lengthy phone calls and lately capitulating to all of Russia’s demands.
So is this a big bluff to get Tehran back to negotiate the deal that Trump himself abrogated when he took office the first time? (And if so, why would Iran trust Washington this time)? Or will Trump (again) heed the call of Israel’s Netanyahu and expend US blood and treasure to take out Israel’s enemies?
Already Trump’s top picks, including his ambassador to Tel Aviv Mike Huckabee who is doing his best Colin Powell impression – claiming that as soon as Iran takes out Tel Aviv it will turn its sights to Tennessee – are urging action against “the head of the snake” as Bibi is wont to describe Iran. The pieces are falling into place and Trump’s entire cabinet is chock full of individuals for whom a war with Iran is the single most important item on the foreign policy agenda.
As analyst William Schryver points out, Iran is certainly not Yemen, Afghanistan, Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya, or Noriega’s Panama. The United States under four years of mismanagement by whoever was acting as Biden’s brain has already thrown everything it had available in attempt to secure a strategic defeat for Russia and lost. The DC neocons move from failure to failure without skipping a beat, even as the US economy is bled dry by the war machine.
This war would be the end of Trump’s presidency and could well be the end of the US economy itself. All for an outrageous domino theory presented by (to a large degree) US religious extremists not unlike the religious extremists they claim to oppose abroad – that Tehran is seeking to “take over” the United States. It’s bonkers…yet for those of us who spend decades watching US foreign policy bonkers usually wins the day. Strap in…
