Trump Iran Bombing: Latest Developments & Concerns
- After the operations in iran in June and in Venezuela this month, Trump is clearly gaining confidence in his use of military force.
- But Trump is also confronting the reality that even a military as powerful as America's has limits on its ability to conduct complex military operations on multiple consequences...
- Only about a third of the 11 US aircraft carriers are at sea at any given time.When the USS Gerald Ford was moved from the Mediterranean to the...
It appears increasingly likely that in the coming days, the United States will once again launch airstrikes against Iran.On Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that a “massive Armada is heading to Iran,” referring to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and several other naval ships that have recently taken positions in the region, along with rapid build-ups in aircraft and air defense systems. Shoudl he order an attack, Trump warned the damage would be “far worse” than “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the bombing operation targeting Iran’s nuclear sites carried out by the US last June.
It’s a shockingly fast pivot from just weeks earlier, when Trump appeared to back down from his “locked and loaded” threat to intervene over the state’s brutal crackdown on protesters. Despite reports of horrific casualties, the president indicated that he was satisfied that the killing of protesters had stopped and that Iran had halted hundreds of planned executions. It’s too late for an intervention to rescue the protesters – the movement has been effectively crushed for now, with estimates of the number killed ranging from 3,000 to 6,000, or possibly much higher.
But the stated motives for the new military standoff are different this time. Trump is publicly calling for Iran to negotiate a deal for “no nuclear weapons,” escalating a longstanding demand at a time when the regime looks especially weak. The New york Times has reported that US officials have given the Iranians three demands: a permanent end to all uranium enrichment and the destruction of its current stockpiles, limits on its ballistic missile program, and an end to support for proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
This is not unlike the build-up in venezuela before the raidInspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, say they’ve been denied access to the three nuclear facilities that were bombed in June: Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. Most critically, the IAEA says it cannot account for the location and condition of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.Estimates suggest Iran may have 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity,just a short technical step from the 90 percent purity needed to build a weapon. In theory, this could be enough for around 10 nuclear bombs, though Iran is not believed to currently be building those bombs, and given the extent of the Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran’s power structure revealed in the lead-up to the war, it would likely be very cautious about doing so.
If an Iranian nuke is still a theoretical threat, its ballistic missile problem is a current and growing one to the US allies in the region who would bear the brunt of Iran’s retaliation.
If Iran appears to have made little progress on reconstituting its nuclear program, the same cannot be said for its missiles. Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Iranian missile warfare at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote recently that the regime has embarked on “what can only be described as a concerted campaign to reconstitute and dramatically expand its ballistic missile capabilities” as the US and Israeli strikes in june.
This has included active reconstruction and reinforcement efforts at missile sites damaged during the war -confirmed by satellite imagery – and new production sites coming online. In December, a US special operations team intercepted a ship carrying Chinese missile components to Iran, and there was speculation that month that Israel was considering a new strike on Iran’s missile capabilities.
as for the “axis of resistance,” Iran’s network of armed proxy groups throughout the middle East that Trump is also demanding be cut loose, it was badly degraded by Israeli attacks following the october
After the operations in iran in June and in Venezuela this month, Trump is clearly gaining confidence in his use of military force. both operations delivered quick results with minimal US casualties and without leading to the quagmires that critics warned of.
But Trump is also confronting the reality that even a military as powerful as America’s has limits on its ability to conduct complex military operations on multiple consequences in quick succession.
Only about a third of the 11 US aircraft carriers are at sea at any given time.When the USS Gerald Ford was moved from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean in the Venezuela build-up, it left the Middle East without a nearby carrier strike group, which may have partly limited US options to strike Iran during the protests in early January.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, notes that the purpose of these strike groups is as much defensive as it is indeed offensive. The US doesn’t need an “armada” of surface ships to attack Iran: Operation Midnight hammer was carried out by submarines launching ballistic missiles and B-2 bombers that took off from Missouri.But the two carrier strike groups at the time played a key role in intercepting the hundreds of missiles and drones Iran launched at Israel in retaliation.
The operation took a toll. The US used around a quarter of its total stock of Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) interceptors - at least 100 missiles, only 11 or 12 of which are produced each year. and while Israel had remarkable success at intercepting Iranian missiles during the war, it was running dangerously low on its defensive Arrow interceptors by the end of the conflict.