• Trump says it has been difficult to make a deal with Iran
  • US fully expects Iran to retaliate, official says
  • A sustained campaign carries more risk to US forces, broader Middle East

WASHINGTON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations against Iran if President Donald Trump orders an attack, two U.S. officials told Reuters, in what could become a far more serious conflict than previously seen between the countries.

The disclosure by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the planning, raises the stakes for the diplomacy underway between the United States and Iran.

U.S. and Iranian diplomats held talks in Oman last week in an effort to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s nuclear program, after Trump amassed military forces in the region, raising fears of new military action.

U.S. officials said on Friday the Pentagon was sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East, adding thousands more troops along with fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers and other firepower capable of waging attacks and defending against them.

Trump, speaking to U.S. troops on Friday at a base in North Carolina, said it had “been difficult to make a deal” with Iran.

“Sometimes you have to have fear. That’s the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of,” Trump said.

  • hector@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    6 hours ago

    The US and Israel will be able to bomb them with impunity. At most Iran will be able to hit a few targets that make it through missile defense. Maybe an airplane or two if they get lucky, a navy ship maybe, a target in Israel. But that’s the extent of it, the west can bomb them, it changes nothing and only further cements their leaders in power.

    Whomever is telling you the country is about to overthrow their government while still functionally at war with Israel and the US is playing you, they are rallying around the flag, and all you are doing is getting their people killed.

      • hector@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 hours ago

        I hope you are wrong and we won’t see, but I fear we will find out. Even if they kill the leaders, the ayatollah will be Israel’s main target, and their revolutionary guard, it’s not like that will usher in the shah to come in and relaunch his corrupt western puppet regime to sell out the country’s oil while their secret service ruthlessly suppresses dissent and tortures and murders people, and the rich leave the majority in desperate poverty, without running water and dirt floors, as was the case with the Shah.

        This is not the way to create regime change, and it’s not meant to, this is for Israel to have forever war so their leaders don’t have to call elections and answer for their failure as law and order candidates to keep the country safe, not even from their own ghetto they had unlimited resources to hem in and abuse. They were too busy cancelling the judiciary to keep their country safe.

        Israel has dirt on the president, the billionaires, and a critical mass of other swells and lawmakers. Not just dirt, videos of them fucking children and assorted perversions, which is not even counting whatever else they’ve accumulated. They have absolute control over the US right now as beset as they are with epstein’s revelations and the ham handed cover up of it.

        They are using it, we will have forever war for the domestic politics of our supposed vassal state that now controls us, unless we can break the hold of the epstein blackmail by making it all public.