Trump Considering Resuming Major Combat Operations Against Iran
The options are not good.
NYT (“Trump Weighs His Options in Carrying Out New Strikes in Iran“):
President Trump was in the Oval Office on Friday morning with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in what appeared to be a review of military options for potentially resuming the bombing campaign against Iran.
The existence of the meeting was revealed by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a graduation ceremony at the Naval Academy. While he said nothing about the substance of the meeting, the timing was notable, as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz appear to have hit a dead end.
There is no shortage of targets, should Mr. Trump, in coordination with Israel, decide to resume the assault on Iran that paused on April 8. There are energy facilities left untouched after about 38 days of bombing, the deep underground nuclear storage site at Isfahan where Iran’s supply of near-bomb-grade uranium is already under rubble, and missile sites that were attacked back in March but appear to have been dug out.
And after weeks of declaring that an agreement was near, and then that the Iranians were “dangling” him, negotiations seem to be at a standstill. Mr. Trump announced on Friday that he was skipping the wedding this weekend of his son and namesake, Donald Trump Jr., because of “circumstances pertaining to the Government, and my love of the United States of America.”
For Mr. Trump, the risks of resuming combat operations appear far greater now than they were in late February, when he ordered the first strikes in Operation Epic Fury, in coordination with Israel.
Now he has to deal with the reality that after five weeks of war and six weeks of cease-fire, he has failed to force Iran’s leaders to relent. Mr. Trump frequently notes — accurately — that Iran’s navy has been sunk and its air force destroyed, and that many of its missile sites and military bases have been reduced to rubble or badly damaged. But the destruction has not translated into victory.
Crucially, the near-bomb-grade nuclear uranium remains where it has been since Mr. Trump ordered a bombing raid on three nuclear sites nearly a year ago, deep underground at Isfahan. Iran’s missile capability has been degraded, but not destroyed. And the Strait of Hormuz has fallen under Iran’s control, even as the U.S. Navy intercepts shipments headed into or out of Iranian ports.
If Mr. Trump orders new combat operations, the political risks are high. Already gas prices are over five dollars a gallon in some parts of the country, and renewed military activity could send them even higher. Popular sentiment is clearly against the war, a range of public opinion polls show, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted to around 37 percent.
Still, he remains under countervailing pressure not to give in. “Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran’s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness,” Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Friday. “We must finish what we started.”
CBS News (“U.S. prepares for new military strikes against Iran“):
The Trump administration was preparing Friday for a fresh round of military strikes against Iran, according to sources with direct knowledge of the planning, even as diplomacy continued.
No final decision on strikes had been reached as of Friday afternoon.
[…]
Some members of the U.S. military and intelligence community canceled their plans for the Memorial Day weekend in anticipation of possible strikes, several sources said.
Defense and intelligence officials began updating recall rosters for U.S. installations overseas as tranches of troops stationed in the Middle East rotate out of theater, part of an effort to reduce the American military footprint in the region amid concern about possible Iranian retaliation.
[…]
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CBS News that Mr. Trump has “made his redlines abundantly clear: Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, and they cannot keep their enriched uranium.”
“The President always maintains all options at all times, and it is the job of the Pentagon to be ready to execute any decision the Commander-in-Chief could make,” Kelly said. “The President has been clear about the consequences if Iran fails to make a deal.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Wednesday that any further strikes against the country from the United States or Israel could widen the conflict beyond the Middle East, promising “crushing blows … in places you cannot even imagine.”
The United States is in precisely the same position as it was when the ceasefire was announced six weeks ago, only worse.
Iran has no incentive to end its nuclear program or give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. They have absorbed the deaths of much of their senior leadership, the enormous destruction of their conventional military, and remain standing.
The United States and Israel hit all of the major military targets on their list and then some during the first phase of the conflict. The options now are to either hit dual-use infrastructure, notably energy facilities, that radically complicate postwar reconstruction, and/or sending in ground forces. The latter option, considered highly undesirable from the start, has been complicated by the fact that the Marines sent to execute that eventuality have been sitting idle aboard ships for an additional six weeks, becoming less fit and ready for a fight.
An excellent CSIS report by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park details the magazine depth issue that has concerned analysts for some time. Their bottom line: “Analysis of seven key munitions shows that the United States has enough missiles to continue fighting this war under any plausible scenario. The risk—which will persist for many years—lies in future wars.” Still, critical interceptors, notably Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Patriot, and Standard Missile 3 inventories are being stretched thin.
But President Trump is in a fraught political dilemma. The war is already unpopular. It appears to be the one issue Congressional Republicans are willing to defy him over. Restarting the war will only intensify the pressure. At the same time, ending it without achieving any of the stated goals from the outset of the conflict would be a humiliating defeat.
Given that decisions in this WH are based on mood rather than evidence, it is too much to expect a sober evaluation of the range of possible outcomes. He’s going to resume the bombing in a show of faux toughness and try to withdraw. The likely result is no change on the ground in Iran, with the Iranians responding by attacking infrastructure of our (former?) gulf allies.
It’s a good thing that the US doesn’t have an embassy in Tehran, we’ll be spared the images of diplomats being hauled up into helicopters.
You can trust El Taco to appraise all options, possible, impossible, and unpossible, and manage to steer unerringly to the one with the worst possible outcome.
Wow – Is it Friday after the stock market closes again so soon?
The level of incompetence being displayed by Fatso, on a daily basis, is stunning.
@Sleeping Dog: I’m not sure how much longer we can continue bombing, given the pace we are using up our ammunition stockpiles. Troops on the ground would be even worse for Trump.
And Iran knows this. They are playing the long game.