While Donald Trump stays with consultants in the situation hall of the White House, which joins in the striking Iran, the US President will also consider how Tehran could revenge.
The Supreme of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Washington of “irreparable damage” when the United States ends up in Israel’s war against the Islamic Republic.
This could include direct attacks on US forces or diplomatic missions in the Middle East, cyber attacks, terrorism, strikes of Tehran’s deputies in the region or disorders of oil and gas shipping from the Golf, the largest energy exporting region in the world, said former American security officers.
“Trump probably hears the list of options that are open to the Ayatollah: attacking attack ships and bases or attacking allies such as Saudi or the United Arab Emirates,” said Elliott Abrams, who was the special representative of Iran and Venezuela in the first Trump government.
A third option for IranAbrams was said to “close” the street of Hormuz, the narrow waterway, through which a third of the global sea -bred raw oil comes by every day. That would “increase world oil prices immediately,” he said.
Since then on Monday evening by the G7 summit in Canada to Washington, Trump card Has made his top advisor for intelligence, security and defense consultants twice in the situation hall, the secret service of the President in the west wing of the White House. He will have a third meeting on Thursday. A decision has not yet been made as to whether the United States will fully join the war.
On Wednesday, six days after Israel started his attack on Iran, Trump said that the next week would be “very big” to determine the course of the new conflict – and whether the United States would be committed.
“I have ideas what to do, but I didn’t make a final. I like it to make a final decision a second before your due date.
While he spoke, there were US military goods, including a new aircraft group group On the way to the Middle East.
However, Iran was “now” prepared for a counter -current against the United States with a “series of ballistic rockets, cruise tracts and drones” with which he could hit American bases and ships, said the former Air Force Secretary, Frank Kendall.
That did not mean that it would do so immediately, said Kendall. It would be an “escalation question” for the Iranians, he added, and “a calculation of which additional attacks would be restored if they were answered in the USA.
According to a US defense officer, the United States has around 40,000 soldiers and military personnel in the Middle East. It runs eight constant bases in the region in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the VAE. It is also present at eleven other military sites, including in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
The largest US base is Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the regional headquarters for the US Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the entire Middle East. The base houses about 10,000 US troops. Another 13,500 troops are located in Kuwait, while another 9,000 live in the US marine base in Bahrain.
Iran could target the locations and bases in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, said Kendall. These are equipped with air defense, but are a closer area of Iran than Israel, which means that shorter rockets could be used and there would be less warning time.
“Due to potential attacks, they are always a reasonable warning, but I would assume that (it) would be (now) higher,” he said.
The United States also has around 2,500 soldiers in Iraq and hundreds in Syria. This staff could be susceptible to attacks by Iranically supported Shiite militants in the past that has been fired rockets and drones on US assets and troops as well as from the Iranian rockets.
Another risk that Trump has to take into account is that the USA could not destroy Ford, the Iranian nuclear system that buried half a kilometer under a mountain.
Fordow is one of the two most important uranium enrichment systems in Iran, and the USA and Israel look at its destruction key to eliminate the republic’s nuclear program. Iran says that the program for civil purposes is used.
By demolishing the underground facility, the USA could drop 30,000 pound bunker bombs From Stealth bomber.
But the mission would be laced with risks – and could fail.
In this case, Fordow would probably “remain a challenge for non -distribution efforts,” said Heather Williams, director of the project on nuclear questions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Iran could also group new and be more determined to develop a program for nuclear weapons hidden. The republic already enriched the uranium at levels near the weapon quality.
“Every additional damage might reset it for years, but it would not stop her from reconstructing or continuing a program to acquire nuclear weapons,” said Kendall.
Iran could also reset with the punishment of the economic effect by targeting the energy supply from the Golf.
In 2019, the weaknesses were exposed when a rocket and drone attack against Iran temporarily blamed half of Saudi’s crude oil production. Saudi Arabia and other golf states have been relaxing with Iran in recent years to reduce tensions and ward off more strikes.
In the street of Hormuz, Iran quickly used attack boats, submarines and land-based anti-ship weapons to go on sailing ships, said Kendall. Alternatively, it could dismantle the waterway.
Iran also uses the street for its own oil exports, its key source for foreign currency. This could reduce the risk that Tehran will reduce on the street, but ships were still “susceptible to attacks”, added Kendall.
Since the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 on Israel, the Iranian Houthis in Yemen has already disturbed the maritime traffic through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, despite months of air strikes in the USA that aimed at the group.
Helima Croft, former CIA analyst and global strategy manager at RBC Capital Markets, said she was concerned about the susceptibility of Iraq, which produces 4 million oil a day. The infrastructure in Basra was threatened by “Iranian -supported militias that work very close to these institutions”, she told the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum on Wednesday.
Other experts said that they thought, Israel’s bombing, which killed many of the best military commanders of Iran and destroyed rocket launchers and plants, had adequately weakened Iran’s ability to retire against the United States.
Israel has destroyed most of Iran’s air defense in the past few days and has almost all of the air dominance about the republic, which could help convince the USA to strike.
The Iranian main representative, the Lebanese militant movement in Hisbollah, was also severely weakened after Israel had started a number of devastating attacks on the group last year.
Iran would give “big disadvantages” to Iran to take revenge, said Erik Raven, former U.S. Navy underground secretary.
“Your supplies are exhausted (and) American rocket defense systems are very capable of,” he added. “There is no chance that these attacks will achieve one of their political goals. The calculation is all risk, no reward.”
Brett McGurk, the coordinator of the White House for the Middle East under Joe Biden, said that the United States had planned and trained for a potential basic mission for “10 or 15 years”.
The plans have been refined by Bidens Presidency in the past two years, and the window of the ability for a military option is now very open.
