How has US shifted military jets and ships in Middle East?

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The US is shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel from Iranian attacks as President Donald Trump warns Tehran to step back from the conflict.Trump's social media posts saying his patience with Iran was "wearing thin" have raised the possibility of deepening US involvement, perhaps by using its bunker-busting bomb to strike a key Iranian nuclear site built deep underground in the mountains.Israel doesn't have the massive munition it would take to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, or the aircraft needed to deliver it. Only the US does.As America's national security leaders discuss the next steps, the Pentagon has moved to ensure that its troops and bases in the region are protected.Here's a look at the US military presence in the Middle East:In a social media post, Trump warned that "we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran."US officials insisted as of Tuesday that the American military has not taken any offensive actions against Iran, only defensive strikes to take out incoming Iranian missiles to protect Israel.Additional US fighter jets and refuelling tankers have been deployed to the region, but officials have declined to provide specific numbers. Fighter jets have joined in launching strikes to defend Israel, but officials said Tuesday that no American aircraft were over Iran.Aurora Intel, a group that reviews open source information in real time in the Middle East, said the U.S. Air Force had put additional refueling aircraft and fighter jets in strategic locations across Europe, including England, Spain, Germany and Greece. The information was obtained from public aviation tracking websites.US fighter jets have been patrolling the skies around the Middle East to protect personnel and installations, and bases in the region are on heightened alert and are taking additional security precautions, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not provided any details, but said on Fox News Channel late Monday that the military movements were to "ensure that our people are safe."American warships also are shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Israel, with the USS The Sullivans and the USS Arleigh Burke launching strikes over the weekend.The Sullivans has been joined in the Eastern Mediterranean by the USS Thomas Hudner this week to continue those defense strikes, while the Arleigh Burke has moved away from the area, according to a U.S. official.The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is in the Arabian Sea with the four warships in its strike group. They are not participating in the defense of Israel. But they are positioned to provide security for U.S. troops and bases along the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.The USS Nimitz has been long scheduled to take over for the Carl Vinson and is heading west from the Indo-Pacific region toward the Middle East. The official said it is slated to arrive in the region by the end of the month, and the two carriers would likely overlap at least for a short time before the Vinson heads home to San Diego.There also are destroyers in the Red Sea, and others are based in the Western Mediterranean and participating in exercises in the Baltic Sea.

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What may happen next with the US entering the Israel-Iran conflict?

The United States entered the Israel-Iran conflict early Sunday (June 22) with its warplanes attacking Iran's three nuclear sites, namely Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow. With the conflict in West Asia escalating and the rest of the world watching anxiously, here are some likely outcomes read more The United States has launched an attack on the Iranian nuclear sites in West Asia. File image/AP After prevaricating about whether the United States would enter Israel's war on Iran, President Donald Trump finally made a decision. Early Sunday, US warplanes and submarines struck three of Iran's nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, where the Iranians have a uranium enrichment plant buried about 80 metres beneath a mountain. These strikes have to be viewed as part of an overall continuum that began with the Gaza war following Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and then continued with Israel's attacks on Hezbollah (the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon) and the fall of the Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Iran has never been weaker than it is now. And when Trump said it may take two weeks for him to decide whether to bomb Iran, the Israelis likely pushed him to act sooner. We can assume there was a lot of Israeli pressure on Trump to use the massive ordnance penetrators, the 30,000-pound (13,600-kilogram) ' bunker buster' bombs that only the US can deploy with its B2 bombers. Now that Trump has taken the significant step of entering the US in yet another West Asia war, where could things go from here? There are a few possible scenarios. Iran strikes back The Iranians know they don't have the strength to take on the US, and that the Americans can do enormous damage to their country and even put the Iranian regime's stability at risk. This is always the prime consideration of the clerical regime led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – everything else is subordinate to that. To gauge Iran's possible reaction, we can look at how it responded to the first Trump administration's assassination of the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020. Iran said there would be a major reaction, but all it did was launch a barrage of missiles at two American bases in Iraq, which caused no US fatalities and very little damage. After that token retaliation, Iran said the matter was closed. Iran's reaction to the new US strikes will likely be along these lines. It probably won't want to get into a tit-for-tat with the US by launching attacks against American facilities in the region. Trump has promised to respond with force: STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Iran, a bully of the West Asia, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. It's also unclear how long Iran will be able to prosecute this war. This depends largely on how many ballistic missiles and launchers it has left. There are various estimates as to how many ballistic missiles Iran may have remaining in its stockpiles. It was believed to have about 2,000 missiles capable of reaching Israel at the start of the war. Some estimates say Iran has fired 700 of them; others say around 400. Whatever the number is, its stockpiles are dwindling quickly. Israel has also destroyed about a third of Iran's ballistic missile launchers. If Israel is able to destroy all of them, Iran would have very limited ability to fight back. Iran backs down Before the US got involved in the conflict, Iran said it was prepared to negotiate, but it wouldn't do so while Israel was still attacking. So, one scenario is that some sort of compromise can now be worked out, in which Israel announces a ceasefire and Iran and the US agree to resume negotiations on Tehran's nuclear program. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The big problem is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he doesn't trust the negotiating process and he doesn't want to stop Israel's military actions until all of Iran's nuclear facilities have been completely destroyed. He's also been bombing Iran's oil terminals and gas facilities to put even more pressure on the regime. A man looks at flames rising from an oil facility after it appeared to have been struck by an Israeli strike in Tehran. AP But the regime has shown itself to be incredibly determined not to lose face. It was under great pressure at different times during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and never considered surrendering until a US missile mistakenly took down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. Iran then agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire. But the Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, causing an estimated one million deaths. And when the then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, agreed to the ceasefire, he said it was ' worse than drinking poison'. Given the state of Iran's military capabilities, Khamenei, the current supreme leader, might surrender simply to try to preserve the regime. But this would be quite a climbdown as far as he's concerned, and he has been very obstinate in the past. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The regime is very unpopular, but the Iranian people, in my experience, are strongly patriotic – loyal to their country, if not the regime. Though it's difficult to gauge opinion in a country of 90 million people, a lot of Iranians would not want to be ordered to do anything by the US or Israel, and would rather fight on. Netanyahu has said he wants to create the conditions for the Iranian people to rise up against the regime. But it's worth bearing in mind that the opposite of autocracy is not necessarily democracy. It could possibly be chaos. Iran has a number of different ethnic groups and there may be huge disagreements over what should take the place of the clerical regime, were it to fall. At this stage, the regime will probably be able to hold together. And even if Khameini were to die suddenly, the regime will likely be able to quickly replace him. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Though we don't know his probable successor, the regime has had plenty of time to plan for this. Those in senior positions will also know that a post-Khamenei succession struggle really would put the regime at risk. The US engagement is limited According to the new polling by The Economist and YouGov, released on June 17, 60 per cent of Americans were opposed to joining the conflict between Israel and Iran, with just 16 per cent in favour. Among Republicans, 53 per cent opposed military action. So, these strikes were not an obviously popular move among Americans at this stage. However, if this is an isolated event and succeeds in bringing a swift end to the war, Trump will probably be applauded by a majority of Americans. If the US has to go back with more bombers – or there are serious attacks on US interests in the region – there could be more adverse reactions among Americans. Another question is whether Iran's 400 kilograms of 60 per cent enriched uranium have been destroyed in the US attack. If it hasn't been destroyed, and depending how much damage has been done to its centrifuges, Iran may be able to reconstruct its nuclear program relatively quickly. And it could have more incentive to further enrich this uranium to 90 per cent purity, or weapons-grade level, to build a nuclear device. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Ian Parmeter, Research Scholar, Middle East Studies, Australian National University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.