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U.S. – Israel Ready To Strike At Iran
U.S. President Donald Trump has managed to maneuver himself into a position that makes a long war on Iran all but inevitable.
About two days ago I was still betting on Trump to chicken out of a war with Iran. The military buildup in the Middle East was insufficient but for a short in-out air campaign on Iran with no discernible value.
But over the last days the U.S. military has sent many more air refueling tankers, dozens of more fighter planes and – most importantly – command and control elements to the Middle East. The force is sufficient for a large air campaign that could be sustained for at least two weeks. An additional carrier strike force has entered the Mediterranean and will be positioned west of Israel by the end of the week. A second carrier strike group is deployed in the Arabian Sea.
Deploying such a large force is extremely costly. Pressure will increase quickly to use it or to stand down.
The last negotiations between The U.S. and Iran went well but ended without any results. Iran promised to come back in maybe two week with a detailed plan on how to proceed:
“We were able to reach a general agreement on a set of guiding principles, based on which we will proceed from now on, and move toward drafting a potential agreement,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV after talks with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva.
The two sides will each draft and exchange texts for a deal before setting a date for a third round of talks, he said, cautioning that the next stage would be “more difficult and detailed.”
Two weeks is a long time and the military clock is now ticking faster than the diplomatic one.
The U.S. military is reported to have told Trump that it will be ready to strike by this weekend:
Top national security officials have told President Trump the military is ready for potential strikes on Iran as soon as Saturday, but the timeline for any action is likely to extend beyond this weekend, sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News.
Mr. Trump has not yet made a final decision about whether to strike, said the officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national matters.
With the forces deployed and ready to strike Trump is no longer in a position to avoid a war if Israel wants one. If Netanyahoo were to strike Iran the U.S. would immediately have to intervene to lower the consequences of Iran’s inevitable retaliation.
The deployment of refueling tankers in the Middle East points to the necessity for the U.S. to avoid stationing planes within the reach of Iran’s short range missile forces. Fighters and bombers will have launch from further away, tank up, run their turn on Iran, tank up again and land to reload. The number of sorties that can generated by this will be only half of what a ‘normal’ air campaign would look like.
Any attack will likely start with the firing of one or two hundred cruise missiles. They will be followed by stealth bombers which will try to destroy Iranian air defenses. After that is more or less achieved, waves of strike planes will launch missiles from safe distances to strike at Iranian military and civilian command elements as well as infrastructure in Iran.
Iran will retaliate with waves of drones and older missiles. The aim will be to exhaust U.S. missile defenses. During last years 12-day war it took Iran about eight days to achieve that. Thereafter it used newer missiles which were able to hit their targets in Israel will unexpected precision.
Iran will also use its shorter range missiles to destroy any U.S. element, be it on ground, air or sea, that is within its reach. Irregular forces aligned with Iran in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen may join the campaign.
Iran is expected to be be helped by Chinese and Russian intelligence. During the war in Ukraine the U.S. established the norm that the supply of intelligence to one party of a war is insufficient to make oneself a combatant. Chinese satellite intelligence will allow Iran to have at all times a clear picture of its enemies disposals.
Iran however is undoubtedly the underdog in this fight. It can not win a war against a country that is several thousand miles away from its shores. The damage a sustained U.S. air campaign will cause will be real and very painful. The real threat is not a one off campaign but a constant deterioration of the Iranian state should the U.S. decide to wage a long campaign of attrition against it as it did against Iraq between the two Gulf wars.
The only way to prevent that is for Iran to use the economic power that comes with its control of the Strait of Hormuz. A blockade of the Strait would raise global oil prices to the north of $100 per barrel. With energy prices going through the roof, and the collateral economic damage cause by it, the chance of the Republicans winning the midterms will go down to nil.
It is doubtful though that Trump still cares about that.
Iran needs preemptive strikes on air tankers, EW planes, radars, AWACS, air lift, fuel, ammo at all air bases in the region (Cyprus, Israel, Diego Garcia, Saudi, emirates, Djibouti,Iraq, Azuri, Armenia and the rest to make the US-Zio op ineffective.
If Iran hits these US assets before they are in the air the air campaign fails. Most of these assets can’t be replaced for years or decades and will make the US/Zio/Nato military unable to attack many other countries. Get the IR from Russia/China satellite constellations. Do it now.
They don’t even have to hit any fighter planes, bombers, navy ships. Without EW, AWACS, air tankers, radars, air lift most expeditionary operations are stopped dead.
Iran can run some “tests” of missiles and drones towards US Navy carrier groups to make them back way off out of air range to blunt Navy air to ground missile attacks.
Where is the vaunted “area denial” strategy when a few miles away a gazillion assets will be launched at Iran? That is not area denial. That is “area affirmation for the enemy”. Hormuz shut down is 1980s tactics for the year 2000 US weapons. Time to use 2026 strategy.
Iran seems to wait for all the assets to be in the air where the unproven (or destroyed) Iran air defense can’t hit them. Iran is waiting to be knocked out.
Posted by: jonny law | Feb 20 2026 0:02 utc | 261
The only way to prevent that is for Iran to use the economic power that comes with its control of the Strait of Hormuz. A blockade of the Strait would raise global oil prices to the north of $100 per barrel. With energy prices going through the roof, and the collateral economic damage cause by it, the chance of the Republicans winning the midterms will go down to nil.
It is doubtful though that Trump still cares about that.
My first thought is, if $ per barrel of oil goes higher, the profit margins on US shale oil go higher. And Venezuelan oil, which Trump thinks he has, gets to be a better economic proposition. As to international finance, the dollar/US treasuries have historically been favored in perilous times for capital. Also, in economic crises weaker national economies tend to fail first, just as weaker firms within a state tend to. Economic warfare is war, but the strategy of punishing the people is not a strategy that promises a quick victory. In US politics what happens in the stock market matters to the ruling class, which owns so very many stocks. It appears that Trump thinks a few thousand dollars will pacify the masses. Losing value in their defined benefit pensions will hurt millions I suppose. But the rule is, never let a good crisis go to waste. Cutting Social Security and pensions and raising the retirement age have long been on the agenda. If they can say it’s patriotism to sacrifice, lots of Americans will presumably rally to the colors, at least initially. The additional role of religious belief, fighting satanic Muslims, helps that go down too. Stand up for Jesus, kill the infidel! [Such things are why I think love of country without love of humanity, aka patriotism as it is usually practiced, should be replaced by internationalism, and why religion really does poison everything.]
Our host who from what I remember of his Trump apologetics, when for a long time he seemed to promote the peculiar theory that Russiagate magically neutered the real Trump in his first term, doesn’t expand on why Trump wouldn’t care about the midterms. He’s also a long time denialist about Trump’s moves against (bourgeois) democracy. But what Trump is doing, as well as what his social media posts are saying, clearly indicate he intends to rig the midterms. In any event, impeachment is null and void. The Democrats are not really opposed, they aren’t really fighting the way Trump fights, to win. (He bragged as much.) But the Democrats’ failure to deliver for their supposed mass base (as opposed to their share of the ruling class donors) doesn’t suggest they have any chance at all to convict Trump. By now, national politics is like WV politics, indictments (which is what impeachment is) don’t count. That precedent was set by Clinton.
And as far as Epstein goes, the original special plea deal was under Republican Party auspices and the death of Epstein was under Republican Party auspices. The Republicans have the House, the Senate and the Presidency. And the Democrats have enough of their own tarred with Epstein and worse, the muck kicked up by Epstein hurts his rich buddies. Which is to say, it hurts the real constituency of the leaders of both parties. Epstein is going nowhere. Trump demagogued on Epstein, but he’s fought against it going anywhere the whole time in office. It’s going nowhere.
As to the wargaming in the comments, my thoughts are pretty basic. Strategic air war doesn’t work. Trump I think is quite capable of tolerating American casualties incurred in an Iranian missile campaign, even if he sheds crocodile tears about how that means every patriotic American should support him (and vote Republican—-will he rename it the American Party?) Russia is tied down in Ukraine, one of the purposes of a so-called kinetic theater in the war against Russia. PRC is very weak politically and suffering from an economy that is threatened by far too many billionaires and lesser capitalists. Plus it is too far away, and it is tied down by Taiwan (the purpose in revising the one-China policy and promoting militarization and threats of war in East Asia.) And the intelligence services are very good at subverting governments by appealing to wannabe compradors. My final thought is, the US official policy has always been to use tactical nukes to retrieve defeat of one of its expeditionary forces. My guess is that tactical nukes are already in place just incase, complete with a menu of target(s). I do not think Trump fears the reactions of foreign governments, especially not so-called allies. Those are on notice they are subordinates, not even junior partners. Trump’s government is bulding detention facilities (aka concentration camps) to contain unruly popular objections.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2026 2:08 utc | 281
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