Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official and research director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the U.S. military is positioned for a “sustained, highly kinetic campaign” against Iran if President Trump orders it, she told Fox News Digital.
Stroul said the posture follows what she described as one of the largest recent U.S. military buildups in the Middle East and that forces can be rapidly repositioned to “deploy overwhelmingly lethal force in a short period of time to one theater,” she told Fox News Digital. She said the U.S. has increased the number of guided-missile destroyers, fighter aircraft, refuelers and air defense systems in the region, according to her remarks.
Two U.S. aircraft carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln, have assumed heightened strategic importance, Stroul said. She told Fox News Digital the Ford was tracked transiting the Strait of Gibraltar eastward and the Abraham Lincoln was operating in the Arabian Sea, and said both “will both be in the Middle East CENTCOM theater,” though one could be in the eastern Mediterranean and the other in the Arabian Gulf.
The buildup comes as indirect diplomatic talks between Washington and Tehran continued, with negotiations set to resume in Oman on Feb. 26, Fox News Digital reported. Stroul told Fox News Digital she believes Iran’s leadership is balancing brinkmanship with negotiation and said Iran is “completely outmatched in conventional terms.”
Stroul also said Israeli operations have degraded Iran’s network of proxies, including Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq and elements in Syria, and cited last year’s strikes that she said set back Iran’s nuclear program. “It is not a question of military readiness, but a political decision,” she told Fox News Digital.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
