Post #4853

Trump Has Staked His Presidency on a Khamenei Switch-Off From Power 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Trump may not be unafraid to use military force against Iran, according to the White House, but the reality is the US president has few to no options that could obviously help that country’s protest movement, never mind the fact that the history of US intervention in the region has hardly been a success. Emboldened by the seizure of the erstwhile Maduro, after an operation that took months of planning, Trump talked up military intervention against the Iranian regime with no military pre-positioning having taken place. In fact, there has been a drawdown in the last few months, reducing military options further. The US has had no aircraft carriers deployed in the Middle East since October, after two years of near continuous deployment following the Hamas attack on Israel, having moved out the USS Gerald R Ford to the Caribbean in the summer and the USS Nimitz to a port on the US west coast in the autumn. It means any air or missile strikes against regime targets, and perhaps at the Iranian leader, Khamenei, would probably have to come from or involve US and allied airbases in the Middle East. An alternative would be similar to June’s long range B-2 bombing mission against the underground Iranian nuclear site of Fordow, although that sort of attack against an urban site would appear to be dangerous overkill. The US would also have to ask permission to use bases in countries such as Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia (perhaps even the UK’s Akrotiri base in iCyprus) – and protect them and their host countries against retaliation. Even if such assets were not used by the US, Iranian leaders have threatened to strike US bases and ships if the country is attacked. Although Iran’s military capabilities were badly degraded in the 12-day summer war with Israel, and its air defence systems easily overwhelmed, Tehran has retained a limited missile capability. Key launch sites remain buried in the mountains, and it has been rebuilding. It is estimated that Iran has 2,000 heavy ballistic missiles, capable, if launched in numbers, of evading US and Israeli air defences. A more salient question is: what would the US bomb? It would be possible to identify military and civilian sites used by the Iranian regime, but both the protests and the increasingly bloody regime crackdown are taking place across the country. Targeting is not always accurate, sites can be misidentified and civilian casualties in urban locations would be an evident risk. #trump#attacks#iran#israel#katz#military 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸