What would be the point of an American strike on Iran? | The Economist

US Military Buildup in the Region

• The current US deployment is characterized as an air and naval operation rather than a substantial ground force buildup.
• The centerpiece of the force consists of two aircraft carrier strike groups:
  • One group is currently stationed in the Gulf of Oman.
  • The second group, centered on the USS Gerald Ford, is transiting from the Mediterranean and can refuel to reach striking distance of Iran.
• Over 100 fighter jets are deployed across the region, including:
  • F-35s.
  • F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, which have landed in Israel—a rare occurrence that began in the last 48 hours.
• Deployment locations include floating assets on carriers, as well as bases in Jordan, Bahrain, and Israel.
  • Saudi Arabia and the UAE have explicitly stated they will not allow their air bases or ports to serve as staging grounds for attacks, limiting land-based options in those nations.
• The scale of this force is significant for immediate high-intensity operations but is historically smaller than previous major buildups:
  • It involves two carrier strike groups, compared to five present during the 2003 Gulf War.
  • It is smaller than the force levels deployed for the 1998 strike campaign against Iraq.
• The current posture lacks large-scale special operations forces or substantial marine amphibious forces previously seen prior to operations like the Maduro raid.
• The force is described as sufficient for a major strike campaign with little notice, but likely insufficient for sustaining months of continuous strikes without Israeli Air Force integration.

Strategic Aims and War Endgames

• Analysts emphasize that undefined war aims create an inability to determine when a conflict should conclude, citing David Petraeus's assertion that one must know how a conflict ends to know why they started.
• Potential objectives vary significantly in scope and duration:
  • Regime Toppling: A long, protracted, open-ended campaign that could last weeks or months and is deemed difficult to achieve.
  • Punitive Strikes: A shorter campaign focused on punishing Iran for the killing of protesters, achievable with a single set of strikes without requiring a coercive element.
  • Coercive Diplomacy: A "middle path" involving sufficient damage and cost imposition to force Iran back to negotiations for concessions such as zero uranium enrichment.
• The strategic outcome depends entirely on the chosen aim, as the required military effort to "punish" differs vastly from the effort needed to "topple" or "negotiate."

Negotiation Objectives and Disagreements

• While Donald Trump has publicly demanded a guarantee that Iran will "never have a nuclear weapon," this aligns with Iran's existing public stance and the preface of the 2015 JCPOA; it is not the sole or primary American objective.
• The core negotiation impasses focus on two specific technical issues:
  • Uranium Enrichment: The US demands "zero enrichment," while Iran views this as a sovereign right and may only agree to retain token capacity (e.g., the 3.5% level from the JCPOA or 20% for medical use).
  • Existing Stockpile: Iran proposes diluting its stockpile and shipping the excess to a friendly state (potentially Russia); the US demands all enriched uranium be shipped out of the country, specifically to the United States.
• Previous US strikes in the last year did not destroy Iran's nuclear program but merely degraded and buried the infrastructure, rendering it inaccessible but not obliterated.
• The ultimate US goal appears to be a deal superior to the JCPOA, specifically one that removes "sunset clauses" or expiry dates, which would allow Trump to claim a more permanent agreement than the Obama-era deal.