The Trump administration appears ready to launch an extended military assault on Iran, current and former U.S. officials said, as the Pentagon amasses an immense strike force in the Middle East despite the risks of U.S. combat fatalities and American ensnarement in an extended war.
The arsenal, under assembly for weeks, is awaiting the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying warships, officials familiar with the matter said, after military leaders last week extended their deployment and ordered the ships to the region from the Caribbean Sea. The vessels were approaching the Strait of Gibraltar on Thursday, making an attack possible within days, said these people, whom like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning.
President Donald Trump, speaking Thursday morning at an event in Washington, was ambiguous about what he might do. “Maybe we’re going to make a deal. Maybe not,” he said at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace. “You’re going to be finding out over the next, maybe, 10 days.”
The administration wants it known, officials said, that they are building combat power in the region. The president also has publicly raised the possibility of toppling Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a longtime U.S. adversary, suggesting last week that it would be “the best thing that could happen,” if Iran ends up with new leaders.
Still, it remains unclear whether Trump has approved military action, people familiar with the matter said. One consideration, some noted, is the ongoing Winter Olympics, which conclude Sunday in Italy.
The United States, backed by ally Israel, would have an “overwhelming advantage” militarily over Iran, said Daniel B. Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration. The warships in or nearing the Middle East join a sprawling array of combat power already in position, including dozens of fighter jets, air-defense capabilities, and other weapons.
But a major conflict with Iran poses grave risks, Shapiro said, including ballistic missiles capable of killing U.S. troops in the region, a network of proxy forces across the Middle East that could quickly turn any attack into a far wider and deadlier war, and the potential for significant disruption to maritime shipping and the global oil market.
“They’ll definitely take terrible damage from combined U.S.-Israeli strikes,” said Shapiro, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, referring to Iran. “But that doesn’t mean it ends quickly, or clean — and they do have some ability to impose some costs in the other direction.”
The military buildup coincides with recent meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials aimed at negotiating changes to Tehran’s nuclear program. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that the two sides had “made a little bit of progress” but were still “very far apart on some issues.” Iranian officials, she added, are “expected to come back to us with some more detail in the next couple of weeks.” It is unclear if Trump is willing to wait that long.
Regional diplomats initially thought that the Trump administration’s military pressure on Iran was meant to push Tehran to offer greater concessions in those negotiations, according to a European diplomat briefed on the Iran talks. But after the most recent talks concluded Tuesday, diplomats now believe that Iran is not prepared to budge from its “core positions,” including its right to enrich uranium.
“The Iranians were planning to drown them in technicalities and delay substance,” the diplomat said. “While a more traditional approach would have built on the dialogue, … Trump does not have the patience.”
The U.S. military buildup initially was reassuring to some officials in the region, according to this diplomat, but the indications that the Trump administration is preparing for an extended conflict have become deeply concerning.
“Some actors may have favored targeted strikes to add pressure on Iran,” said the diplomat, referring to officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “But an extended conflict will be bloody and it could bring more countries, either deliberately or by miscalculation, into the war.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to travel to Israel on Feb. 28 to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a State Department official said. The trip would be aimed at keeping Netanyahu abreast of the status of U.S.-Iran negotiations, the official said, but it does not preclude the Pentagon from launching strikes first. In summer, the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear facilities even as the president’s top diplomats had diplomatic meetings with Iranian counterparts on the books.
Netanyahu is eager for the United States to launch a major attack on Iran, and in a speech Sunday he put forward his own conditions for any U.S. agreement with Tehran. Any deal must ban all enrichment of uranium and dismantle “the equipment and the infrastructure that allows you to enrich in the first place,” Netanyahu told the annual conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It should also require that all enriched uranium leave Iran, restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program and impose sustained inspections of Iran’s civilian nuclear program, he said.
Middle East experts have said Iran is unlikely to agree to all of Israel’s demands and it views them as a breach of Tehran’s ability to defend itself.
Khamenei in recent days has resisted signing a deal, arguing in social media posts that Tehran has the right to produce nuclear power and the range of its missile arsenal should not be limited. He also has taunted U.S. officials.
“The Americans constantly say that they’ve sent a warship toward Iran,” he said in one message Tuesday. “Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea.”
An extended assault against Iran could mark the most significant action in decades against the longtime U.S. adversary. For years, Iran has sponsored and facilitated attacks on U.S. troops across the region, U.S. officials broadly agree.
Trump began pondering new strikes against Iran in January, after he pledged to rescue anti-government protesters there following a wave of executions. The president tabled military action, in part because U.S. defense officials warned it would be difficult to manage Iranian counterattacks while a relatively limited number of U.S. forces were in the region, people familiar with the matter said.
The administration has since surged U.S. weaponry, including another aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, that was diverted from the South China Sea. Numerous Navy destroyers, scores of fighter jets, and other war planes also have been deployed, including advanced F-35s with the ability to evade radar.
A review of flight-tracking data in recent days has shown a fleet of tanker planes also relocating to Europe and the Middle East, and many fighter jets repositioned at Muwaffaq Al Salti Air Base in Jordan. Other U.S. military aircraft appear to have relocated to or transited through Vrazhdebna Air Base in Bulgaria, data show.
The military buildup signals the Trump administration is “prepared for something much more extended than a one-day cycle” of strikes, said Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration who is now with the Washington Institute.
An extended conflict would mark a sea change from Trump’s recent military forays, including the January U.S. Special Operations raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, a weekslong bombing campaign last spring against Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the surgical strikes last year against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In each of those cases, Trump authorized significant military action that was significant in scope but limited in duration, declared victory afterward and pivoted to other issues.
Trump has criticized previous U.S. administrations for allowing the United States to become entrapped in lengthy military interventions in the Middle East that killed thousands of U.S. troops and dominated Pentagon resources.
A lack of calamities during those previous operations has made it easy to overlook the potential pitfalls of future missions, said Jason Dempsey, a retired Army officer who studies the use of military force for the Center for a New American Security. They include lethal attacks against U.S. troops, aircraft collisions, or U.S. pilots being forced to parachute or crash behind enemy lines.
“Military operations look quick and easy — right until they are not,” Dempsey said. “What we did in Venezuela was such a unique operation, and a one-off. And even that — I’m not sure it will turn out fine.”
