Translation and Editing: Tomorrow Risk Management Foundation: Nasr Muhammad Ali
Donald Trump has said it will be clear in "probably ten days" whether he will be able to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, as the US military build-up in the Middle East approaches the arrival of a second carrier strike group.
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of his Peace Council in Washington, D.C., the U.S. president stressed that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, stressing that "serious consequences will occur" if the country continues to "threaten regional stability."
And within a possible time frame, Trump said, “We may reach an agreement, but you will probably know that in the next 10 days,” as the United States awaits Iran’s response following talks between them on Tuesday.
White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Iranian officials in Geneva to discuss Iran's uranium enrichment program, which has declined but not been eliminated after U.S. bombing with the participation of the Zionist entity during the 12-day war last June.
The day after the diplomatic meeting, Iran vowed to respond within two weeks to U.S. demands to completely abandon uranium enrichment over sanctions relief, which is roughly in line with the timetable Trump has hinted at.
Last summer, however, Trump gave himself a two-week deadline to decide whether to bomb Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, then attack it with stealth B-2 bombers within a few days.
Experts say that U.S. military assets already in the Middle East are sufficient to start an air-bombing campaign against Iran, possibly in coordination with the Zionist entity, although it is unclear what such a campaign could achieve.
The USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships have been in a strike group in the Arabian Sea for about a month, with nine squadrons of aircraft, including the F-35 Lightning II F/A-18 Super Hornet.
The second carrier group, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford, was confirmed Tuesday in the Atlantic Ocean west of Morocco. Strait of Gibraltar Eastern Mediterranean, on a journey of several days.
The Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, has sailed from the Caribbean, where last month it participated in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, from a fortified compound in an overnight raid.
Matthew Saville, director of military science at the Royal United Services Institute, said the two carrier groups had the capacity to carry out “hundreds of offensive sorties a day for several weeks, with greater intensity than during the 12-day war”.
And even without Ford, aircraft from the USS Lincoln can carry out 125 or more bombing missions a day, giving the United States the ability to begin targeting government and military sites in Iran if Trump decides to launch an air attack.
And aviation experts have spotted significant movements of military aircraft toward the Middle East as the United States ratchets up its pressure on Iran. Six E-3 Century Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft have been deployed to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, relocated from the United States and Japan, and are critical to real-time command and control operations.
"But the question nonetheless is: What is the purpose of all this crowd?" Savile asked.This wide deployment of air and naval assets suggests that the U.S. military is putting Trump in front of the option of a large-scale bombing campaign, going beyond targeting Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and other top leaders.
And last month, Trump promised protesters against the Iranian regime that “help is coming,” but the U.S. military presence was limited at the time. For now, with warships and fighter jets on hand and protests brutally suppressed, the president has shifted his focus to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Options include launching another bombing campaign against the already damaged weapons program. This could include targeting the "Pickaxe Mountain [Natanz nuclear complex]" near Natanz, and the "Taloqan 2" site in Parchin, two nuclear sites that were not targeted during the 12-day war.
And experts from the Institute for Science and International Security concluded in November that Iran “does not appear to be able to enrich uranium on a large scale or manufacture centrifuges in large numbers” after the war.
"However, the location and status of the 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium that Iran possessed remains uncertain." In theory, Iran has enough uranium to make 10 nuclear weapons if it can be enriched to more than 90% and weaponized.
The Zionist entity is pressuring the United States to focus on Iran's ballistic missile program, which is the most serious military threat to Iran. Iran's arsenal is estimated at around 2,000 ballistic missiles spread over up to 25 launch bases across the country, six of which were not targeted by the Zionist entity in June.
Iran does not have effective air defenses, which enable the Zionist entity's army to easily neutralized during the short summer war, which means that the best defense available to it will be counter-attack. Khamenei had threatened to sink American warships “on the seabed.”
And intercepting a barrage of ballistic missiles is extremely difficult even using sophisticated air defense systems of the type used by the United States and the Zionist entity, and there have been signs of an improved rate of accuracy of Iranian missiles in hitting targets during the summer conflict.
And on Thursday evening, Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations told Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Tehran would prepare bases, facilities and assets of the “enemy force” in the region as legitimate targets in case of military aggression.
At the beginning of the 12-day war, only 8% of Iranian missiles penetrated defenses, but on June 22, two days before its end, 10 of the 27 missiles hit inside the Zionist entity, according to the Jewish Institute for National Security.
And the United States is strengthening its air defense systems in the region in anticipation of any Iranian response by striking the Zionist entity or other allies in the Middle East or its regional bases.
Satellite images show the deployment of a Patriot air defense system at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the regional headquarters of US Central Command. U.S. destroyers near Cyprus can also intercept ballistic missiles headed toward the Zionist entity.
The United Kingdom has already informed the United States that it will not allow its air bases, such as RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to be used for air strikes by B-2 bombers, but that, along with other Western countries, it may be lured into participating in the defense of allies in the Middle East.
And last month, the 12th Squadron of the British Royal Air Force redeployed to Qatar, where its Typhoon aircraft were ready for defensive operations in the event of an attack on the Gulf state.
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