Donald Trump’s threat of military action against Iran in response to a deadly crackdown on protesters has raised fears of another crisis in the Middle East – just seven months after the US bombed the country’s nuclear programme.
US officials are reported to have provided Trump with a wide range of options for intervention, from a propaganda campaign to cyber attacks, new sanctions and long-range missile strikes.
While officials have briefed that an attack could come within days, experts remain sceptical that military action will achieve Trump’s ultimate goal of emboldening protesters and pushing through regime change.
Trump assured Iranians yesterday that “help is on its way” as rights groups increased their tally of protest-linked fatalities to 2,000. But to date, the only decisive action has been to sanction Iran’s trading partners.
Washington has already shown a willingness to take unilateral action in the face of international law through its operation to oust Nicolas Maduro from a fortified stronghold in Venezuela earlier this month. But the buildup of US forces in the Caribbean may have left Trump with fewer options to challenge Tehran than he would have liked.
The Independent looks at which options remain available to Trump – and why they are looking increasingly thin.
Military intervention
Donald Trump warned Iran on 2 January that if authorities killed protesters, the US was “locked and loaded and ready to go”.
But the US finds itself today in a tighter position than it was in last June, when it bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in conjunction with an Israeli air campaign.
Washington sent seven B-2 bombers from Missouri to bomb Iran’s sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Operation Midnight Hammer involved some 125 US military aircraft, a number of decoys in the Pacific and a volley of cruise missiles fired from a submarine.
The US also had six B-2s stationed at Diego Garcia and two Carrier Strike Groups in the region, offering options by air and sea.
However, an initial impact report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency concluded the strikes had likely only set back the nuclear programme by a matter of months. The White House said at the time the assessment was “flat out wrong”.
Since the summer, Trump has spread US naval assets across the world – leaving bases in the Gulf depleted of interceptors to respond to an Iranian response.
US aircraft carriers are now in the Americas and Asia, but not around the Middle East, Europe or Africa. The naval buildup around the Caribbean used to displace Maduro drew in the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group from the Mediterranean at the end of last year.
An administration official told Politico this week that the US was not currently preparing any major moves of troops or assets to the Middle East.
If Iran were to retaliate, the US would also be pressed to defend its bases with a depleted stockpile of interceptor missiles.
In July, the Guardian reported that the US only had around 25 per cent of the Patriot missile interceptors it needed for all the Pentagon’s plans after using up its stockpiles in the Middle East. The Patriots sent to the region last year were also returned to South Korea in November, a US official confirmed this week.
“If it does become a longer-term volley of strikes, then your interceptor capacity becomes all the more important,” an unnamed former defence official told Politico. “We could get in a sticky situation very quickly on that front.”
Cyber attacks
One of the other options reportedly floated by officials on Tuesday was the use of cyber weapons against Iranian military and civilian sites.
Planners were said to be considering plans to disrupt Iranian command structures, communications and state media, CBS reported on Monday, citing anonymous Defense Department officials.
“Kinetic action is messy and unpredictable, and we’re not good at non-kinetic intervention,” one former US official focused on Iran and the region told the FT. “In any complex system, you cannot do just one thing. Iran is a complex system.”
Ciaran Martin, former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, told the Guardian that disrupting civilian or government services like electricity could do more harm than good, however, as it would probably affect ordinary people.
Analysts and rights groups warned this week that Iran’s enduring internet blackout appears to have undermined the ability of protesters to mobilise against the regime.
Boosting antigovernment sources online would only work if the population is able to access the internet, likely dependent on a wider rollout of Elon Musk’s Starlink. Trump said he would talk to Musk about restoring internet to the country on Sunday.
Breaking the regime
Ayatollah Khamenei remained unscathed during the Iran-Israel war last year, with reports claiming he was able to evade Israeli detection.
At the height of the conflict, he was said to have prepared a shortlist of candidates to replace him in the event of his death to ensure a rapid transition.
An intelligence report seen by The Times suggested he is now planning to escape to Moscow with aides and family if his security fails this time.
Exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi has been driving some of the efforts to weaken security, drawing defectors in the military and law enforcement towards a ‘secure’ communications channel.
But his message has been weakened by the ongoing internet crackdown, and he still does not have Trump’s backing as a successor to the regime.
Will Todman, senior fellow in the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the BBC it seemed unlikely Trump was pushing for regime change at this point, and more likely wanted to influence its behaviour.
“I think the risks of regime change are so great that I don’t yet believe that is his primary objective here,” he said. “It could be more concessions in the nuclear talks. It could be to stop the crackdown. It also could be to try to implement reforms that lead to … some sort of sanctions relief.”
