Trump weighs new military options against Iran
Tyler Pager, Julian E Barnes, Eric Schmitt, David E. Sanger And Helene Cooper
Washington: US President Donald Trump has been presented with an expanded list of potential military options against Iran in recent days aimed at further damaging the country’s nuclear and missile facilities or weakening Iran’s supreme leader, according to many US officials.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss potential military plans, said the options go beyond proposals Trump considered two weeks ago as a way to fulfill his promise to stop the killings of protesters by Iranian government security forces and militias affiliated with it.
The range of options available includes the potential for American forces to launch raids on sites inside Iran, and this comes in a different context with protests being brutally suppressed, at least for now.
Trump has been demanding that Iran take further action to end its push to build nuclear weapons and halt its support for proxies that have long targeted Israel and destabilized the Middle East.
He and his top aides are considering whether to follow through on threatening military action to achieve those goals and possibly bring about a change in government.
Trump has not yet authorized military action or chosen among the options presented by the Pentagon, officials said.
The president remains open to finding a diplomatic solution, and some officials have acknowledged that the purpose of telegraphing threats of military action was to draw the Iranians into negotiations. In recent days, he has been pondering whether regime change would be a viable option.
“As commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military, President Trump has many options regarding Iran,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “The President stated that he hoped no action would be necessary, but that the Iranian regime needed to make a deal before it was too late.”
Amid the protests that swept Iran weeks ago, the Trump administration considered attacks on Iran’s nuclear program as well as striking more symbolic targets, such as the headquarters of the militias responsible for much of the crackdown on the protests. Trump abruptly ruled out military intervention at that point, after Iranian officials said they had canceled hundreds of planned executions and Israel and Arab countries asked the president to delay any strikes.
Officials say Trump is taking a similar approach to Iran as he did to Venezuela, where the United States has massed forces off Iran’s coast for months as part of a pressure campaign to oust the country’s leader Nicolás Maduro. In this case, efforts to persuade Maduro to leave Venezuela failed, leading US forces to attack the country and capture him. He and his wife are currently being held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn pending trial.
When it comes to Iran, officials remain skeptical that Tehran will accept the conditions outlined by the United States.
These include permanently ending all uranium enrichment, starting with more than 435 kilograms of uranium enriched to near-bomb-grade levels, and abandoning all existing nuclear stockpiles. But most of this material was buried under the rubble created by the strikes in June.
But the demands go further and include limits on the range and number of ballistic missiles in Iran’s arsenal and an end to all support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis operating in Yemen. Accepting missile limits would make it essentially impossible for Iran to strike Israel.
Trump warned Iran in a post on social media on Wednesday Washington time that the military was ready to attack “swiftly and violently if necessary.”
“We hope Iran will ‘Come to the Table’ quickly and negotiate a fair and equitable deal that is good for all parties, NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS,” Trump wrote. “Time is running out, it’s really important!”
But a US official said Trump and his top aides were acutely aware that any operation in Iran would be much more difficult than what the US did in Venezuela.
The challenge and danger for US forces would be much greater, and Iran is a much more capable adversary than Venezuela. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate on Wednesday that he imagines regime change in Iran will be much more complicated to manage than in Venezuela.
That’s why Trump is still considering several options that officials say could happen all together or in some combination.
Among the riskiest is secretly sending U.S. commandos to destroy or severely damage parts of Iran’s nuclear program that were not yet damaged by last June’s U.S. bombing. American forces have long practiced special missions, such as going to countries like Iran and targeting nuclear facilities or other high-value targets.
While Trump has repeatedly said the nuclear program has been “destroyed,” his own national security strategy, released in the fall, took a more measured view, saying the June attack “significantly disrupted Iran’s nuclear program.”
Another option would be a series of attacks on military and other leadership targets that would cause turmoil on the ground that could create conditions for Iranian security forces or other forces to depose 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In this option, it is not clear who will rule the country if the religious leader is dismissed or whether his successor will be more open to relations with the United States.
Trump is also motivated to attack Iranian leaders in part because of their efforts to assassinate him. Federal prosecutors in New York said last year that Iranian conspirators discussed a plan to kill Trump just before he was re-elected president.
Israel is pushing for a third option: Officials want the United States to join it in re-striking Iran’s ballistic missile program, which intelligence officials say Iran has largely rebuilt since Israel destroyed the program in the 12-day war last June.
Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, head of the newly created unit that oversees military operations in Iran, said on Wednesday that any US attack would be considered an act of war and Iran would respond strongly, targeting Tel Aviv.
For this reason, Israeli officials are deeply concerned about Iran’s missile program that could reach civilian and military targets throughout Israel.
U.S. officials emphasized that these and other options are still being developed and discussed among Trump’s inner circle of senior aides, and that no consensus has yet been reached on the ultimate goal of any military action.
There are also serious questions about what legal authority the United States would use to attack Iran if no authorization is obtained from Congress. Modern presidents have regularly ordered limited strikes without congressional approval. However, this could be very different.
A broader campaign against Iran could raise sharper questions about whether the president has committed an act of war, especially if such attacks are aimed at overthrowing or weakening the government rather than rolling back its nuclear program.
In response, the Trump administration will likely invoke Iran’s extensive support for terrorism on any legal grounds; just as Trump did in January 2020 when he ordered a drone strike on General Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.
It is unclear whether the White House will seek a legal opinion on Iran options, but if Trump allows action, the US military continues to increase its presence in the region.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, armed with F/A-18 attack planes and stealth F-35 fighter jets, is on station in the Arabian Sea and within striking distance of Iranian targets, Navy officials said this week. The carrier is accompanied by three missile-firing destroyers.
According to US officials, the US had already sent a dozen additional F-15E attack aircraft to the region to strengthen the number of attack aircraft. Additionally, the Pentagon has sent more Patriot and THAAD air defense systems to the region to help protect American troops in the region against retaliatory attacks from Iran’s short- and medium-range missiles.
US-based long-range bombers capable of hitting targets in Iran remain on higher than normal alert. The Pentagon raised its alert two weeks ago after Trump demanded options for responding to a bloody crackdown on protests in the country.
This article was first published on: New York Times.
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