1). “Scott Ritter & Mohammed Marandi: Trump Calls Putin Crazy! - US-Iran Talks Collapse?”, May 27, 2025, Nima R. Alkhorshid interviews Scott Ritter & Mohammed Marandi, Dialogue Works, duration of video 1:47:09, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=JfyrEhdVoyY >. 2). “Pentagon Prepares for Trump to Go Berserk: Unprecedented number of B-2 bombers amassed for Iran strike”, Apr 07, 2025, Ken Klippenstein, Edited by William M. Arkin, kenklippenstein.com, at < https://www.kenklippenstein.
com/p/pentagon-prepares-for- trump-to-go >. 3). “Trump Is Now at War With Iran: Let's call this what it is”, Mar 17, 2025, Ken Klippenstein, Edited by William M. Arkin, kenklippenstein.com, at < https://www.kenklippenstein.
com/p/trump-is-now-at-war- with-iran >. 4). “The Iran War Plan: Pentagon gears up for 'major' war with Iran”, Mar 18, 2025, Ken Klippenstein, Edited by William M. Arkin,kenklippenstein.com, at < https://www.kenklippenstein.
com/p/the-iran-war-plan >. 5). “The Nuclear War Plan for Iran: Trump’s threats to Tehran are alarming. Here’s what they mean”, Mar 19, 2025, Ken Klippenstein, Edited by William M. Arkin, kenklippenstein.com, at < https://www.kenklippenstein.
com/p/the-nuclear-war-plan- for-iran >. 6). “A Trump Doctrine Emerges”, Mar 27, 2025, Ken Klippenstein, Edited by William M. Arkin,kenklippenstein.com, at < https://www.kenklippenstein.
com/p/a-trump-doctrine-emerges >.
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: In November of 2011 President Obama announced the “Pivot to Asia”; that was an attempt to move military, diplomatic, and economic resources, long dissipated in a series of wars and initiatives in the Middle East, to the Pacific. The U.S. ruling class has long had a major split between the Zionists and their allies, the Atlanticists who focused on relations with Europe who were somewhat affiliated with the Zionists, and the Pacific / East Asia faction. The Pacific / East Asia faction certainly were allocated a share of U.S. Imperial Resources that were squandered, in the largest Imperial Initiative of the entire period of U.S. Hegemony in the Post WW 2 epoch, in the S.E. Asian Wars. After that the U.S. Empire built several hundred military bases, the majority of which were placed in a ring around China; meanwhile they used significant resources, helping Japan and later S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, to emerge as prosperous societies that demonstrated the superiority of Capitalism to Communism and/or Socialism.By the late 1970s, and throughout the 1980s into the 1990s, Japan looked like the society that would replace the U.S. as the hegemonic power. The Plaza Accords, signed in 1985 by the U.S. and the other G-5 Countries — France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan— functioned to manipulate exchange rates by depreciating the U.S. dollar relative to the Japanese yen and the German Deutschmark. The Japanese Ruling class shifted somewhat towards Finance Capitalism enriching themselves in the process, and the surge of Japan towards Global Political and Socioeconomic leadership was thwarted (much to the relief of much of the Japan population who could still remember the total defeat suffered in WW 2).
As U.S. economic, scientific, technological, and industrial primacy waned the emphasis on military and coercive operations, always prominent, increased. Unlike the British, whose homeland was a relatively small island and who had spent centuries on colonial projects, the larger and more prosperous U.S. had not developed large cadres of Colonialists ready to administer the extraction operations and subject peoples that now basically fell into the lap of the U.S. rulers after 1945. By 1947 the U.S. Congress recognized this lack and passed the National Security Act that established the CIA and the Air Force as a separate military branch. However now, the earlier period characterized as Strong Hegemony is long past and military force is the main tool left, along with financial swindles, to maintain control during these last years of Weak Hegemony. The long tradition of providing support for Israel and the Zionist project have taken the majority of the Empire's resources and continue to pose a major issue in the U.S. Ruling Class. An attack on Iran is high on the Zionist's agenda now, and has been a goal of the Israeli Right and the U.S. Zionists since the late 1970s
The current situation, with an emphasis on the interactions between the U.S. / Israel and Iran, is discussed at some length in Item 1). “Scott Ritter & Mohammed Marandi: ….”. As part of an ongoing interpretation of events, both inside the U.S. and overseas, Ken Klippenstein posted an article in Item 2)., “Pentagon Prepares for Trump ….” that discusses the deployment of significant military forces to the 2-month long Trumpian campaign against Yemen and the Houthis. This included 6 B-2s and 4 B-52s and their support tankers and other crews and equipment to Diego Garcia, the Navy deployed two Super Nuclear Powered AirCraft Carriers and at least one, the USS Harry S. Truman, operated in the confined waters of the Red Sea and was attacked by Houthi drones endangering it. At this point, as a consequence of the cease fire negotiated between Trump's emissaries and the Houthis, much of this force has been withdrawn. After a 2-month deployment, the B-2s returned to Whiteman Air Force Basein Missouri on May 9th (See, “B-Roll: B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers Return From Diego Garcia”, May 9, 2025, U.S. Air Force video by Senior Airman Devan Halstead, DVIDS, at < https://www.dvidshub.net/
video/963195/b-roll-b-2- spirit-stealth-bombers-return- diego-garcia >). Many of the supporters of the Palestinians, particularly the Gazans, consider the Houthis to be the only people on Earth who have taken actual action to support the Palestinians trapped in Gaza. Trump expressed the characterization to the Houthis expressed by the Zionist and their allies in one of his Truth Social messages
Klippenstein has followed the situation for awhile now and posted several articles including Item 3)., “Trump Is Now at War With Iran: ….”; Item
4)., “The Iran War Plan: ….”; Item 5)., “The Nuclear War Plan ….”, that all discuss the extremely aggressive moves taken by Trump and changes in military policy towards Iran since he ascended the throne. A lot has been made of the chance that Russia would resort to tactical nuclear weapons if they suffered serious reversals in the Ukraine War. But there appears to be a much higher likelihood that it will actually be the U.S. that resorts to tactical nuclear weapons if the U.S. / Israel launch a major campaign against Iran. There has been a fairly vigorous program to develop small nuclear weapons by the U.S. that has produced bombs that have an explosive yield of as low as 5 Kilotons of TNT (the Hiroshima Bomb had a yield of 20 Kilotons of TNT). With the serious depletion of U.S. munitions stocks that has taken place because of the ongoing wars on Gaza and Ukraine, and there was a further serious depletion of the “Bunker Buster” bombs that were used against Houthi strongholds in Yemen. That is particularly dangerous as tactical nuclear bunker buster bombs are still available though the strictures against using nuclear weapons has kept them from being used so far. At this point the U.S. military has 50 earth-penetrating B61-11 nuclear bombs, that are the nuclear version of conventional “Bunker Buster” bombs.
Item 6)., “A Trump Doctrine Emerges”, looks at the moderation of policies that various institutions including the U.S. military and Department of State, have tried to impose as the agenda of the regime. There will be some sort of internal struggle, as to what policy will be pursued, between the various “advisors” and flunkies who surround Trump. Trump himself is abominably ignorant of world affairs and is primarily concerned with cashing in on the various scams and swindles that are now available to him. But the advisors who surround him are mostly adamant in their beliefs and ready to fight for the resources their agenda wants to control in order to implement their wishes. Of course, Trump early in his first term repudiated the JCPOA agreement with Iran, that controlled the enrichment of Uranium by the Iranians. Trump did this when Sheldon Adelson was still alive, and had been his largest campaign contributor in the 2016 Presidential Campaign. Adelson, in contrast to Trump, was a successful Casino Operator and he had given a speech at the Cooper Union in which he proposed that the U.S. explode 1 nuclear bomb in the Iranian Desert & then, if the Iranians did not knuckle under to American demands, to drop a nuclear bomb on Tehran (a city of 10 million).
It seems as if the most likely outcome of any internal struggle will be for the Zionists to once again get to use the U.S. Military to further their agenda. The military officer corps is mostly opposed to attacking Iran, but they could get bowled over. At the least Trump's advisors would like to use the U.S. military in the Trump / Netanyahu redevelopment scheme for Gaza. The other major faction wants to take on China, perhaps in an actual war, over Taiwan. They torment themselves by projecting the ability of the U.S. military to take on China, a situation that becomes less realistic and the likely outcome of which grows grimmer for the U.S. and the world in general, as the years roll by.
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“Scott Ritter & Mohammed Marandi: Trump Calls Putin Crazy! - US-Iran Talks Collapse?
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Pentagon Prepares for Trump to Go Berserk
In the largest single deployment of stealth bombers in U.S. history, the Pentagon has sent six B-2 “Spirit” aircraft to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
The long-range bombers, which are uniquely suited to evade Iranian air defenses and can carry America’s most potent bunker busting weapons, flew in from Missouri last week in a little noticed operation.
The B-2s carry not just bombs, but a message for Iran: “do you see our sword?,” as one retired general told Newsmax this week.
President Donald Trump hasn’t been shy in threatening Iran, saying that if Tehran doesn’t close the door on a nuclear capability they will experience “bombing the likes of which they haven’t seen.”
“Hell” will “rain down” on the country, Trump has also said. Just today, amidst the stock market meltdown Trump again reiterated his threat, saying that “doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious” — which to the president is undertaking a massive strike.
Blatant as the threat is, the U.S. government has not otherwise publicly acknowledged the bomber buildup. Though B-2 bombers were used to carry out strikes on underground Houthi facilities in Yemen (both under the Biden and Trump administration), the forward deployment of the bombers to the island of Diego Garcia was only reported when commercial satellite images of the airbase there revealed the six on the runway.
“To my knowledge, this is the largest B-2 deployment to a forward location,” Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists told me. Kristensen is the world’s leading tracker of nuclear comings and goings.
“All the bombers, they’re not in hangers, they’re underneath satellites where they can be photographed and seen; and the idea is, do you see our sword?” retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt, who served as Deputy U.S. Military Representative to NATO, said in an interview with Newsmax last week. Holt also said that the B-2 deployment “gives the president a military option that he can actually use these weapons against Iran if needed.”
This is a highly visible threat to Tehran, but at least one party isn’t supposed to notice: the American people.
The Pentagon refuses to acknowledge that the deployment is even happening. Trump’s new Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell has only vaguely alluded to “other air assets” being deployed it has announced that two aircraft carriers will stay in the region, the result of a delay in sending one home after its current deployment.
According to Google Trends, searches for terms like “B-2” and “war with Iran” have only modestly increased, indicating that public curiosity has been suppressed despite Donald Trump’s many threats to attack his enemies.
Why B-2s?
The B-2 was first designed during the Cold War to penetrate deep into Russian territory for a nuclear attack. The aircraft’s stealth features (making it all but “invisible” to conventional radar) allow it to evade even the most sophisticated air defenses. Subsequent to its deployment, the bomber was modified so that it could take on unique conventional roles as well, especially in attacking underground facilities.
Though the U.S. has a variety of long-range fighters in the region — F-16s, F/A-18s, F-15Es, and F-35s — deployed on aircraft carriers and based in countries like Jordan and the UAE, the B-2s also allow the Trump administration to carry out unilateral strikes. That is, without the permission or involvement of any other Middle East countries. (Diego Garcia continues to be militarily controlled by the U.K.)
Affording a unilateral option, the bombers also fulfill one of the priorities of the Pentagon and the administration in undertaking any use of force: making sure that the risk to U.S. personnel is minimal. Though they are much more expensive to operate and even deploy, the risk of one of the B-2s getting shot down is lower than that of fighters.
As I’ve already written, the Pentagon has been developing a new Iran war plan in recent months. That even includes options for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, which I’ve also written about.
Assuming the B-2 bombers are directly connected to a full-fledged war decision would be a mistake. They are tools much better suited to a single demonstration strike. Note that from Diego Garcia, a round trip flight to Tehran exceeds 6,000 miles (more than 10 hours of flying), thus limiting how many of the bombers could be used in a sustained operation.
Assessing the likelihood of war with Iran requires understanding three distinct parts:
Intelligence assessments;
Public muscle flexing (of which the B-2 bombers are part); and
War planning.
Each of these three elements exists in separate stovepipes and each proceeds along their own timelines and separate approaches to the problem. It is when the three are in sync that the moment of maximum danger emerges. We’re not yet there, but let’s take a look at each of the three.
Intelligence
Intelligence assessments fall into two categories, the big picture and the day-to-day. I recently wrote about the intelligence community’s latest long view of Iran; that is, its assessment of Iran’s overall condition and Tehran’s worldview. That intelligence assessment does not scream war, but again, that’s the intelligence community’s view, not that of the White House.
Day-to-day (or crisis) intelligence — an assessment that Iranian forces are on the move, that Iran is readying an attack, that a terrorist strike is imminent — doesn’t necessarily have to jive with the long-term prognosis as seen by the eggheads in Washington. Crisis intelligence is more of an operational matter.
Though mostly operational in nature, crisis intelligence is also the kind of “intelligence” that leaders at the top have to monitor. Think of it as cable news or some viral social media frenzy. It sucks all of the oxygen out of the brain and there is a tendency to lose touch with the big picture. A contributing factor of crisis intelligence in Trump’s mind is also what’s on Fox or Newsmax — which is to say that’s what this president sees.
Flexing
Which brings us to public muscle flexing of the B-2 deployments. I say flexing because what follows isn’t “war,” not full scale war as people think of war. It is more the preamble of the government or the military taking action to “defend” itself, or an occasion by which the Pentagon expresses anger or frustration, or wants to send a signal, even by bombing.
This is the realm where Donald Trump’s stream of consciousness or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s need to stick one of his tattoos in someone’s face plays an outsize role. What the boss says in this world is crucially important, even if it is ridiculous, because the war machine has to know at what speed to operate and what thing it should produce. And it needs to know right now, tonight, which is why the B-2s are there in the region in such large numbers.
When Trump spews, even his tone influences the military “posture,” as those who are out “in the field” seek to gauge what the White House is planning so that they can anticipate what’s coming. (It is hardly ever organized or clear under any administration.) Thus Trump’s bombast and his body language influences U.S. moves, which influence how the Iranians see the dangers, which can provoke Tehran to flex its own muscles, which then triggers the crisis intelligence alerts, which makes Trump and company speak more loudly which pushes the U.S. military to make moves to get ready, which the Iranians see, which we see and which starts a never-ending cycle.
You get the idea.
War Planning
Behind all of this is war “planning.”
A common misconception is that the Pentagon has contingency plans for everything, a belief that overlooks how time consuming and irregularly they are produced. War planning is the realm of what’s possible, not just what the president says.
Moving B-2s to Diego Garcia or increasing the number of aircraft carriers in the region, or bringing in more squadrons of aircraft — all of these are muscle flexing actions. Sustained military action with national objectives (e.g. defeat the Iranian military, achieve regime change, eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities), are a whole other dimension. This is the world of placing and sustaining troops, not just airplanes, and making sure that they have sufficient supplies, everything from ammunition to meals to medical care.
In the world of war planning, when Trump says “I want X,” the order goes down the chain of command through a mind-boggling number of levels, broadening in scope the further the order goes down the chain until someone (and many someones) say ‘We can’t do it.’ That someone could be anyone, but for simplicity’s sake, think of the ultimate someone as “the Pentagon.” The Pentagon says this and the Pentagon says that.
If the Pentagon wants to do X, they can move mountains to get it done. And that takes time, and lots of resources.
If the Pentagon doesn’t really want to do X, because it thinks the risks are too high or because it thinks the order ill-considered, it has an arsenal of passive aggressive ways of gumming up the works to make sure it doesn’t happen except as it wants. ‘What do you actually mean, Mr. President, sir, that you want to end Tehran?’ the Pentagon asks. ‘Nukes?’ ‘Covert action?’ ‘World War III?’ ‘That looks a lot like Ukraine, or worse, sir. Are you sure?’
You can think of this as calmer heads prevailing, but it is also a game that the Pentagon plays, either to shift responsibility for the outcome to the politicians or as to guide the president’s order so that it ends up looking like it’s asking for what the Pentagon wants, what the Pentagon thinks is possible and will allow it — that is, the Pentagon, not America — to declare victory.
Over the past 24 years, the Pentagon has perfected this game of executing the play it wants to run, not what the coach wants. That’s why the U.S. has become very good at bombing targets and conducting aerial assassinations, and in keeping the ball in play.
The military has grown highly proficient at executing a strike (or defending against one). To those sitting at their desks in Washington, the risk factors of sending off the B-2s to rain down hell seem minor: no American (and even relatively few Iranian civilians) are going to die, world markets aren’t going to be roiled by an oil crisis, and the public isn’t going to much notice. Trump can thus push the button and activate those who are pulling the triggers with relative ease. That’s why these days we see so many instances of one-off bomb strikes. Donald Trump doesn’t seem capable of changing any of this.
But he can yell louder and be more offensive and threaten more. When it comes to Iran, he is revving himself up. It’s not war that the B-2s are threatening. It’s worse than that. This is preparation for reckless action that, from the Pentagon’s perspective, carries little risk. That’s dangerous and is also why the public must to involve itself. But it can’t do that when the Pentagon refuses to publicly acknowledge what it’s doing.
That’s why I do these stories.
I’ve written over a dozen articles over the past year about war with Iran, trying to make the point that it is already here; that the endless tit-for-tat strikes we’ve seen is “war.” We might get to the point where all three elements of the war-making process sync together and ground troops get involved, but in the interim, we are just one or two steps below maximum danger.
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Trump Is Now at War With Iran
On February 28, the U.S. military announced that two B-52 heavy bombers flying from an “undisclosed location” in the Middle East (which I can report is the country of Qatar) dropped bombs on another “undisclosed location” (Iraq). The message wasn’t lost on neighboring Iran, whose state media warned that the B-52s are “nuclear-capable bombers” carrying a message whose recipient “was clear as day; The Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Video of the Feb. 28 B-52 exercise (credit: U.S. CENTCOM)
Clear as day in the Middle East, perhaps, but not in the U.S., where the show of force was barely reported at all. The Pentagon, masters of obscuring controversial things they’re doing behind sleep-inducing jargon, insisted that the B-52 exercises were merely “to assure regional partners,” to “support security and stability in the region,” and so on.
Then on March 9, a second bomber demonstration was made: U.S. B-52s flew alongside Israeli fighter jets on long-range missions, practicing aerial refueling and joint operations. Again the American press missed the story; though not the Israeli press, which correctly reported the real purpose of the operation — “readying the Israeli military for a potential joint strike with the U.S. on Iran.”
The military preparations culminated this weekend in a set of U.S. airstrikes on Houthi leadership in Yemen. On Sunday, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz bragged to ABC that the operation “took out” top Houthi officials, making it very clear that this is all about Iran.
Waltz said in his interview:
"This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible."
At that point, I thought the news media would finally get the message. But the coverage instead adhered to the sterile language of the Pentagon, framing the strikes as focused on logistical targets and a mere continuation of the Biden administration’s small-bore strategy of degrading Houthi capabilities.
A representative example appears in the New York Times’ Sunday article on the attack, calling the attack “similar” to those of the Biden administration. Per the article:
Air and naval strikes ordered by President Trump hit radars, air defenses, and missile and drone systems in an effort to open international shipping lanes in the Red Sea that the Houthis have disrupted for months with their own attacks. The Biden administration conducted several similar strikes against the Houthis but largely failed to restore deterrence in the region.
In The New York Times’ telling, there’s nothing to see here; new boss same as the old. But Biden never targeted Houthi leadership elements in his strikes! Trump has entered into uncharted waters. The media, meanwhile, echoes the Pentagon’s framing of the Houthi strikes as intended “to restore freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea, as U.S. Central Command said in its one-sentence long press release on the strike.
Today, Trump went out of his way to advertise that the audience for this operation was Iran. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said, “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
Little noticed amid the torrent of headlines about Elon Musk, DOGE, and the budget fight, Trump’s rhetoric is alarmingly combative. Earlier this month, Trump said he had told Iran in a letter, “I hope you’re going to negotiate, because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.”
“Do whatever the hell you want,” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in response, seemingly slamming the door shut on any attempts to pull back from the conflict.
Go in militarily? That seems like something we should debate publicly, but that hasn’t happened. Google searches for “war with Iran” spiked several times last year but have almost flatlined since Trump won the election.Google searches for “war with Iran” from March 16 to the past year
Trump has embraced what he calls a “maximum pressure” policy on Iran but nobody seems much interested in what that means. Now he’s attacking in Yemen, signaling more to come, and preparing for an even larger campaign to fight Iran directly.
To end a war you first have to admit you’re fighting one. The media seems wholly unwilling to do this, instead parroting the Pentagon’s assurances that this is all perfectly normal. Go back to bed, America!
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The Iran War Plan
President Trump’s menu of options for dealing with Tehran now includes one he didn’t have in his first term: full-scale war.
Pentagon and company contracting documents I’ve obtained describe “a unique joint staff planning” effort underway in Washington and in the Middle East to refine the next generation of “a major regional conflict” with Iran.
The new planning effort, sometimes referred to as the SEED project, covers everything from subtle tools like military deception right up to the rather less subtle use of nuclear weapons. The plans are the result of a reassessment of Iran’s military capabilities, as well as a fundamental shift in how America conducts war.
Though many in the media incorrectly dismissed the recent U.S. attack on the Houthis in Yemen as little more than a continuation of what the Biden administration was already doing, the new Iran war preparations make clear that the U.S. is exploring a far more aggressive approach. Following his successful assassination of Iran’s top general Qassim Suleimani in 2020, Donald Trump seems to have taken the lesson that aggressive action is relatively cost-free.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has watched Iran develop into a major missile and drone power over the past decade. Hardly anyone believes any longer that Iran is interested in any kind of ground invasion of its neighbors (the previous planning assumption). Iran’s nuclear program is also no longer the Pentagon’s highest concern. The “war” in many ways is already here, the combination of narrow, pin-prick attacks by proxies, Iran’s various covert and influence campaigns, and its use and proliferation of long-range drones and missiles, especially to Russia.
As assumptions about Iran as a military threat have shifted, so too have attitudes about the American way of war. Countering Iran’s constant efforts takes the combined efforts of the military, the CIA, cyber and space agencies, and the Departments of the Treasury and State . No war today is fought solely by the military.
The war plan emphasizes a “holistic approach” to “planning, coordination, and synchronization” of U.S. Government activities, says one document. CENTCOM, the Pentagon’s regional command responsible for the Middle East and Iran, is tasked with creating a family of plans that incorporate U.S.-only, bilateral, and multilateral operations with partners and allies, according to the documents.
As activities around the ISIS war and now support for Israel in Gaza has shown, war planning has to be more multilateral in nature, taking into consideration everything from the use of allied bases and airspace to gaining political support for the fighting.
The new war plan construct is itself brand new, in that the “multilateral” component includes Israel working in unison with Arab Gulf partners for the first time, either indirectly or directly. The plan also includes many different contingencies and levels of war, according to the documents, from “crisis action,” meaning response to events and attacks, to “deliberate” planning, which refers to set scenarios that flow from crises that escalate out of control.
One document warns of the “distinct possibility” of the war “escalating outside of the Unite States Government’s intention” and impacting the rest of the region, demanding a multifaceted approach.
As a result, CENTCOM has been tasked with the creation of a set of strategies, campaign plans, “commander’s intents,” concepts of operation, theater plans, operations orders, and synchronization efforts to incorporate all interested and involved parties.
The various planning documents being reworked include:
Global Campaign Plan for Iran (GCP-I): “Addresses the most pressing trans-regional and multi-functional strategic challenges, across all domains,” including conventional and special operations forces; air, ground, sea, subsea, cyber and space warfare.
CENTCOM Campaign Plan: Primary plan through which the CENTCOM commander “executes his day-to-day campaigning.”
“Operational Plan up to a Level 4 detail for Iran.” OPLANs are now prepared at four levels of detail:
Level 1 involves a Commander’s Estimate of courses of action and military options to meet every potential contingency.
Level 2 is the Base Plan that lays out an approved course of action.
Level 3 involves a full “concept plan.”
Level 4 is a full operations plan with allocation of specific units and mobilization and deployment procedures.
Decision Support Book to guide the President and senior decision makers in the first 96 hours of the execution of the Level 4 OPLAN.
Multilateral Combined OPLAN, including “Multilateral Engagement Strategy to obtain access basing and over flight.”
Discrete Strike Option Plan, prepared for specific “Target Sets” such as Iranian leadership or nuclear capabilities.
War preparations for Iran, the contracting documents state, take place at the Top Secret, “sensitive compartmented information,” “special access program,” “special technical operations,” sensitive activities, and Focal Point levels of classification. The whole effort is so closely held that the contracting companies supporting war planning are warned that even mention of unclassified portions is prohibited:
“Disclosure of any information related to this contract (classified or unclassified) is strictly prohibited without the expressed written consent of … [CENTCOM]. This includes, but is not limited to, use or information in unclassified brochures, promotion sales, literature, reports to stockholders, or similar material.”
U.S. Central Command did not respond to my request for comment about the Iran war plans. However, Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, alluded to the question in a press briefing on Monday.
REPORTER: Is the U.S. military considering a military option for Iran?
PARNELL: … all options are on the table at this time.
For the Pentagon, “all options” is a bit of a boilerplate answer (though it is certainly more belligerent than the messaging of the Biden era).
When Trump talks about his ill-defined policy of applying “maximum pressure” on Iran, all options now include all-out war. While a range of military options are often provided to presidents in a passive aggressive attempt on the part of the Pentagon to steer them to the one favored by the brass, Trump already has shown his proclivity to select the most provocative option. Trump reportedly “stunned” Pentagon officials in 2020 when he chose to assassinate Iran’s top general Qassim Suleimani from his menu of choices.
This week, the Pentagon spokesman Parnell also referred to Trump’s post on Truth Social, in which he vowed “dire” consequences for Iran in the event of Houthi retaliation. Trump had just conducted a strike on Houthi leadership as well as command and control elements — an unprecedented escalation from previous operations and a clear indication that we’re at war with Iran, as I wrote yesterday.
The Trump administration has used the Houthi strike to differentiate itself from the Biden administration. As Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told ABC:
“The difference is these were not pinprick, back and forth, what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks. This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is one, going after the Houthi leadership and two, holding Iran responsible.”
Asked if direct military action on Iran is possible, Waltz replied:
“Well, all options are always on the table with the president, but Iran needs to hear him loud and clear … We will not only hold the Houthis accountable, but we're going to hold Iran, their backers accountable as well and if that means their targeting ship that they have put in to help, their Iranian trainers, IRGC and others, intelligence, other things that they have put in to help the Houthis attack the global economy, those targets will be on the table, too.”
2024 may be behind us but its lessons aren’t. Israel’s assassination of top Hezbollah officials in Lebanon was largely perceived by Washington to be a resounding success with few downsides. Trump likely took back the same message, leading to his strike on Houthi leadership this week.
If the news media are seeing all of what’s going on as some repeat of Biden tit-for-tat or limited attacks by Israel on Iran's early warning and air defenses, they are not understanding what’s going on behind the scenes. What Trump can now do, which is right out of the Israeli playbook, is attack Iran's command and control, including Iran’s leadership, if for no other reason than to emphasize the new boss isn’t the same as the old one.
If the past month has shown us anything, it’s that Trump’s second term will not be the same as his first. The press needs to be way more vigilant than it has been. And I need more of you guys to become paid subscribers so I can keep reporting on our alarmingly quiet march to war. Tomorrow, for example, I’ll be reporting on the U.S.’s nuclear option for Iran.
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The Nuclear War Plan for Iran
Need more of you to subscribe so I can continue documenting our silent march to war:
Donald Trump has laid down a Ukraine-like ultimatum to Iran: either agree to give up your nuclear program within two months or suffer the consequences. He’s been vague about what these consequences might include, but I can now report specifics that are as severe as you can imagine.
“We can't let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump says. “I would rather have a peace deal than the other option but the other option will solve the problem.”
To the casual observer that might sound like more of the targeted airstrikes the U.S. has been doing, but behind the scenes, as the Pentagon prepares for a "major" regional war with Iran, the use of nuclear weapons is on the table.
The new Iran war preparations that have been underway since last year include new nuclear options.
“One might find it extraordinary to think that nuclear weapons are even considered,” a retired senior military officer who has been briefed on the planning tells us, “but we have entered a new era.”
The officer says that a combination of factors — none of them precipitated by Donald Trump directly — have created a perfect storm to bring nuclear weapons back into the picture.
“Reintroducing nuclear deterrence,” the officer says, serves three purposes:
To directly deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons (or then from using them).
To convince Israel not to use its own nuclear weapons — that is, by making it clear that the U.S. equally would (or could) preempt Iran if something dire happened.
To dissuade Saudi Arabia from perceiving that it has to develop its own nuclear weapons because Iran is doing so.
To implement these seemingly unconnected national objectives, Central Command (CENTCOM), the U.S. combatant command for the Middle East, is charged with maintaining capabilities to back up Washington. Today, for instance, the White House claimed that in a telephone call between Trump and Putin that the two agreed “that Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel.” To Washington, an Iranian nuclear program is just “destroy Israel” spelled another way.
“Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a top priority with global implications,” CENTCOM commander Gen. “Erik” Kurilla told Congress last year. “We will continue to develop military options for the Secretary of Defense and President, should they be necessary.”
Down in Tampa where CENTCOM headquarters is located, there is scrambling to make sure that whatever capabilities exist supports the new position. The nuclear options are contained in Appendix 1 to Annex C of the Iran war plans, I am told.
CENTCOM’s planning for the potential use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East has undergone three significant shifts in the past 45 years.
Cold War Era
The first generation of war plans (called the “OPLAN 1004” series) were written during the era of the Shah and were completed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The plans included the potential use of nuclear weapons to counter a potential Soviet invasion. This included two “vertical escalation” options — referring to stepping upwards on the nuclear escalation ladder —, one “passive escalation” envisioning the 5th Special Forces Group parachuting into northern Iran and detonating backpack nuclear land-mines on Iranian soil, and the other “active escalation envisioning B-52 bomber strikes on targets in the Soviet Union and frontline Army artillery and missile strikes on Soviet forces in Iran to buy time. The last war plan of this generation was completed in 1984.
“With four decades of hindsight, the idea of the US and the Soviets engaged in a great battle in the Zagros [mountains] for control of the Middle East seems unrealistic at best,” CENTCOM itself said at a retreat in 2020.
Planning for war in the Middle East was essentially moribund under the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. CENTCOM OPLAN 1002, finished in the 1994-1995 timeframe, included a nuclear annex that planned for nuclear strikes against targets in Iraq and Iran, now in the name of countering proliferation. U.S. policy had shifted to having the capability to threaten nuclear strikes against any and all potential nuclear adversaries.
War on Terror Era
After 9/11, new “strategic concepts” regarding Iran were articulated by President Bush. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its inclusion in the “axis of evil” dominated war planning during the next decade. The war on terror was the singular focus of Washington, and Iraq war planning (now under CONPLAN 1025 and first prepared in August 2003) ignored nuclear weapons. CENTCOM continued as a “nuclear” command, but “regional” nuclear planning was shifted to Strategic Command (STRATCOM) so that Tampa could focus on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and counterterrorism.
A U.S. military attack on Iran is "simply not on the agenda at this point," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in February 2005. That same month, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of CENTCOM, said that there were no new plans to deal with Iranian nuclear weapons. The command, he said, was focused on Iran’s support for the insurgency in Iraq.
In 2008, Iran test fired a new missile capable of hitting Israel. The next year, it launched a satellite into space. More missiles came. Gen. James Mattis, who was then CENTCOM commander (and would go on to become Trump’s first secretary of defense) pushed for a regional collective approach to air and missile defense against Iran but found no takers. The rest of the Obama administration focused on Iran nuclear diplomacy and the new war on ISIS, with Iran military options falling off of Washington’s radar screen.
The Trump Era
When Donald Trump announced in May 2018 that he was withdrawing from Obama’s nuclear deal, he said that during Washington’s singular focus on nukes, Iran had “escalated its destabilizing activities in the surrounding region.” Trump didn’t know it, but he was articulating the Obama administration “whole of government” approach, that everything was connected. He reinstated sanctions on Iran and designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. It was the first time that the U.S. officially identified another country’s military as a terrorist organization.
Throughout the next year, Trump imposed more sanctions even as he articulated that the U.S. “does not seek conflict with Iran.” Iran had other ideas though, and in September 2019, Tehran shot missiles and drones at Saudi oil facilities. It was at a time when Secretary Mattis was declaring the war on terror over and a new era of “Great Power Competition.”
Iranian attacks continued, and in December 2019, Secretary of State Pompeo said that any attack on a U.S. base by Iran or its proxies “will be answered with a decisive U.S. response." The next month, Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike. “They see we have the will to act,” said Gen. Frank McKenzie, the CENTCOM commander at that time.
“For far too long, all the way back to 1979, to be exact, nations have tolerated Iran's destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond,” Trump said in an address to the nation upon Soleimani’s killing. “Those days are over. Iran has been the leading sponsor of terrorism and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We will never let that happen.”
That same month, my editor revealed that nuclear weapons were already back in the picture and that a war game undertaken just days before Trump was elected in 2016 ended with the U.S. nuking Iran. A new nuclear weapon was deployed in February 2020, a low-yield warhead for Trident II submarine-launched missiles. The Pentagon said it was “to strengthen deterrence.”
Just days before Biden was elected, responsibility for Israel shifted under CENTCOM for the first time, accelerating the current generation of war plans. Iran’s development of a full array of missiles and attack drones, now combat proven in the Houthi war (and later in Ukraine) finally resulted in the collective air defense system for the Middle East and even put Arab and Israeli generals in the same room to discuss common war plans against Iran.
President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Lapid met in Jerusalem in July 2022 and signed a declaration reaffirming the "unshakeable U.S. commitment to Israel's security," and, as part of the pledge, to use "all elements of its national power" to ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.
With the Saudis now saying that they could pursue their own nuclear capability if Iran gets an operational nuclear weapon and Israel saying that its capabilities against Iran had “dramatically improved” and that it was “ready for the day when an order is given,” the Gaza war erupted. The ingredients came together as Iran put its full might behind Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah and then attacked Israel directly. The massive use by Russia of Iranian drones (and, more recently, ballistic missiles) against Ukraine has raised the stakes.
I described yesterday the general development of the war plans against Iran, but buried within those plans, I’ve learned from procurement documents and corporate internal communications, including a renewed focus on nuclear weapons. The basic framework of OPLAN 1025 persists, but behind the “C-Iran” strategy (counter-Iran) to attack Iran’s missile and drone capacity, and now to attack Iranian leadership, either with “kinetic” or “non-kinetic” means (including covert and cyber actions and special operation forces) lurked the nuclear options.
As part of the current “SEED Project” that I described yesterday, there is a more highly classified nuclear planning effort. Escalating an Iran conflict to the use of nuclear options can originate in two ways: One, with the CENTCOM commander “requesting” the use of nuclear weapons, mostly to stave off Iranian conventional military success; and two, in a “top down” order, that is, by the President, mostly as a “demonstration” to “signal” to Iran.
Once again the Trident II low-yield option is in Donald Trump’s hands. A submarine can stealthily deploy and the White House can decide. This is the problem of having secret and unexamined plans. The option is now available to this president.
In the decade or so I’ve been reporting, I don’t recall ever once writing about nuclear weapons. Not because it wasn’t important, but I didn’t take it seriously and it never seemed real. Now, the nuclear threat seems very much a live issue with this latest generation of detailed military planning that could be put in motion at any time and by a single person who has already shown himself to have a much bigger appetite for risk, even than in his first time.
The voices of complacency, those who are telling America to go back to bed and that everything is under control, will insist that all of this is hypothetical and that military plans are just plans. (He’s just loading the gun and cocking it, what’s the big deal!) As I’ve shown, the nuclear options go way back; but they’re now being actively modified in completely novel ways. With Donald Trump openly threatening “the other option,” it’s surreal that this isn’t front-page news.
The press needs to be way more vigilant than it has been; and I need more of you guys to become paid subscribers so I can keep reporting on our alarmingly quiet march to war.
It’s Donald Trump waving that gun, after all.
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A Trump Doctrine Emerges
The Trump administration turned longstanding U.S. policy on its head this week by stating that foreign governments like Russia, China and Iran don’t really want to pick a fight with the United States.
The administration’s Annual Threat Assessment released on Tuesday is as close to an articulation of a Trump doctrine as anything we’ve seen so far. But in a week dominated by Signal-gate coverage, the assessment has been roundly ignored by the news media.
Drawing on information from across the entire intelligence community (IC), the annual assessment normally feels like a predictable laundry list of “threats” that sound more like a fundraising pitch for the national security state than serious analysis.
Not this time.
The intelligence agencies conclude that Russia overall has been weakened by the Ukraine war, even though Vladimir Putin’s grip on power is stronger than ever. But absent is the usual rhetoric about Moscow’s broader (and certain) threat to Western Europe.
The Ukraine war is also characterized as being seen by Russia as a “proxy conflict with the West” and thus an element of a new Cold War. In the past year, the assessment says, Russia has “seized the upper hand” in what it calls “a grinding war of attrition” playing into to Russia’s military advantages.
U.S. intelligence’s concern here isn’t that Russia poses a threat to the West — remarkably, the assessment never once mentions NATO! — but more that Moscow might secure more concessions in the negotiations to end the war. (The assessment points to the “increased risk of nuclear war” as creating “urgency” for the U.S. to end to the war.)
“Concerns over escalation control and directly confronting the United States”have held Putin back from moving further on Europe, the assessment says. Such concerns have even “tempered the pace and scope” of Russia’s relationships with other adversary nations. And the future outside of Russia’s immediate military gains doesn't look bright, with mounting demographic and economic challenges.
China, which both the Obama and Biden administrations cast as the chief national security threat to U.S. (and the source of inevitable conflict), gets similarly unusual treatment. “China’s leaders will seek opportunities to reduce tension with Washington,” the assessment says.
While warning that China “seeks to compete with the United States as the leading economic power in the world” and will “continue to expand its coercive and subversive malign influence activities to weaken the United States internally and globally,” the assessment downplays the military threat. It instead focuses on the possibility of “miscalculations potentially leading to conflict.”
There is little talk of China as a threat to its neighbors, and the tone seems to focus on avoiding conflict. China is “more cautious than Russia, Iran, and North Korea about risking its economic and diplomatic image in the world by being too aggressive and disruptive,” the assessment concludes.
On Iran there’s another significant departure from the rhetoric of the Biden administration, and even Trump’s own rhetoric. Noting the many blows that Iran has sustained in the past year and a half — to its proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, in the loss of Syria, and to Iran’s own air defenses and military forces — the assessment says that leaders in Tehran are beginning “to raise fundamental questions regarding Iran’s approach.”
The section concludes with remarks that make Iran sound less like the foreboding ‘greatest sponsor of terrorism’ Washington usually describes it as and instead almost meek. “Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei continues to desire to avoid embroiling Iran in an expanded, direct conflict with the United States and its allies,” the assessment says, adding that “Iranian leaders recognize the country is at one of its most fragile points since the Iran-Iraq war” — the bloody conflict that devastated Iran in the 80s.
Even on the subject of the hermit kingdom, North Korea, the assessment avoids the familiar hyperbole. “Since coming to power, Kim generally has relied on non-lethal coercive activities … to win concessions and counter U.S. and South Korean military, diplomatic, and civilian activities,” the assessment says. Gone is the ominous talk of a 15-minute march to Seoul.
Two months into the administration, for all its chaos, this is no Reagan-like military buildup threatening to bury its enemies, or Bush-style tirade about the Axis of Evil. Instead, the intelligence agencies have articulated a view of the world that is fairly coolheaded.
The leading "threat" to America, befitting Trump’s personal focus, is identified as transnational criminal organizations (like cartels), which for the first time appears as the first section of the annual assessment. With fentanyl and synthetic opioids racking up 52,000 American deaths in one year alone, as the report notes, it’s hard to argue against this being a bigger threat than, say, North Korea.
The relatively judicious picture is jarring to see coming from the national security state, for whom fear mongering about adversary nations is an Olympic sport, with medals awarded in the next budget. Let’s see if the intelligence is heeded.
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