by Michael Snyder
"Iranian leaders are making all sorts of apocalyptic threats. If they are able to follow through on even some of those threats, the Middle East will soon be thrown into a state of complete and utter chaos. As you will see below, the U.S. and Israel are preparing for a massive campaign of airstrikes on Iran. The Iranians are very well aware of this, and they are pledging to attack oil producing facilities, undersea Internet cables, international airports, desalination plants and the Dimona nuclear reactor in response. If Iran is not bluffing, we really could be facing an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East.
On Monday, we learned that two U.S. officials just told CNN that the military is ready to hit Iran really hard once President Trump gives the order…"US forces in the Middle East are prepared to launch new, potentially major, military operations against Iran “within 96 hours of receiving” an order from President Donald Trump, according to two US officials.
Sufficient forces are now deployed in the region to carry out the potential attacks, the sources said. The scope of new US military operations would likely go beyond efforts to simply “mow the lawn” or maintain the status quo by striking radars, launchers and other Iranian assets that can be quickly reconstituted - as has been the case since Trump halted full combat operations earlier this year, the sources added.
“It will be a big effort,” one of the officials told CNN. That view has been echoed by other current and former US officials familiar with internal military planning discussions — some of whom say it is a question of when, not if, Trump will issue a go-order. They believe it could come any time before the end of the year, though most likely after the US midterm elections."
To me, this feels like a story that was leaked on purpose. I think that the Trump administration wanted Iran to read this. Once the USS Theodore Roosevelt arrives next month, we will have three aircraft carriers in the region…Two US carrier strike groups, led by the USS George Washington and USS George H.W. Bush, are already operating in the region. A third, led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt, departed San Diego in late September and is heading toward the Middle East. Its arrival is expected in the coming weeks, with earlier reports pointing to November.
An amphibious readiness group led by the USS Makin Island is also heading to the region with more than 2,000 Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The deployment, alongside the carrier movement, is expected to add approximately 9,000–10,000 sailors and Marines to the regional force.
The USS Boxer amphibious readiness group is already operating near the Strait of Hormuz. The expanded deployments come as the US continues its military operations and extends the presence of forces and equipment in the region.
The U.S. midterm elections are on November 3rd. I know that there are people that disagree with me, but I still think that new airstrikes on Iran will not occur until after the midterms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted them to begin earlier, but President Trump was reportedly able to persuade him to wait…Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing to carry out new attacks against Iran, but US officials have requested he delay until the Trump administration is ready to conduct joint operations, according to two US officials and an Israeli security source. “Netanyahu really wanted and tried to convince Trump for a joint attack in Iran before the elections, and Trump did not give a green light,” the Israeli security source told CNN.
On Tuesday, we shall see if Netanyahu gets another term or not. Israeli voters are about to go to the polls, and it appears that it will be another tight election. Yesterday, Netanyahu shared an AI-generated image of Tel Aviv being destroyed by a nuclear weapon…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday posted an AI-generated image depicting a nuclear explosion in Tel Aviv, warning the public just two days before the election that voting for anyone other than him could expose Israelis to the danger of a “second Holocaust.”
Netanyahu was sharing the words of Yuval Bloomberg, a right-wing activist with roots in the tech sector who once wrote a book against the Oslo Accords. The post by Bloomberg, written last week, included the AI image of the large mushroom cloud rising above Tel Aviv as the city burned from a nuclear blast. Israel faces a “real and tangible existential threat,” the post shared by Netanyahu said. Netanyahu considers the conflict with Iran to be a war for survival.
The Iranians also view this as a war for survival, and they are prepared to pull out all the stops if they are attacked…Iran will strike oil facilities, undersea cables, data centers and AI facilities across as many as seven countries in the Gulf in the event of a fresh US-Israeli attack, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, has said.
Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Mohammad Ghalibaf, the hardliner who led Iran’s negotiations with the US to end the conflict between the two countries, said Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed in principle on an attack, but could not guarantee a successful outcome. He added: “We see the next conflict as an existential threat. The third war in two years means a threat to existence. Our strategy is ‘zero red lines’.” Mohammadi said: “We break the temporal and spatial dimensions of the conflict. The war will continue longer and in a wider geographical area than the enemy anticipates.”
If there are “zero red lines”, no target will be off limits and the Iranians could conceivably use everything in their arsenal. Iranian officials have put out a list of potential targets, and desalination plants all over the region are on that list…
Desalination is the most important source of drinking water for many countries in the region. I asked Google to give me specific percentages, and they were higher than I had anticipated…
Qatar: Over 99%
Bahrain: Over 90%
Kuwait: 90%
Oman: 86%
Saudi Arabia: 70%
Israel: 50%
United Arab Emirates (UAE): 42%
Previously, attacking desalination plants had been a “red line” that Iran would not cross. But now all bets are off.
The Iranians are also threatening to strike Israel like we have never seen before. As I discussed yesterday, Ebrahim Azizi is telling us that it will “take less than an hour” to render Israel “uninhabitable”… Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, wrote in Hebrew on his social media account that any action against Iran’s security and national interests would make the occupied territories uninhabitable in less than an hour. “Know that in the event of any action against our security and national interests, making the occupied territories uninhabitable will take less than an hour,” Azizi stressed.
One of the targets that Iran has threatened to strike in Israeli territory is the Dimona nuclear reactor…
Striking an active nuclear reactor is a “red line” that nobody in the world has been willing to cross up to this point. If the Iranians were to actually severely damage or destroy Dimona, that would create a major nuclear emergency in Israeli territory. Needless to say, the war would go to an entirely different level at that stage.
There had been hope that some sort of a diplomatic breakthrough could be achieved when top officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey visited Iran today…Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, Pakistani Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and the chief of National Intelligence Organization of Turkey Ibrahim Kalin held a meeting with the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) secretary Major General Mohsen Rezaei and President Masoud Pezeshkian as well as Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The meeting was held in Saadabad Palace in the north of the Iranian capital.
Unfortunately, the Iranians made it very clear in advance that their nuclear program would not be on the agenda. Iran is never going to make the nuclear concessions that the Trump administration is seeking. So there will be more war.
All of the preparations have been made, and both sides have itchy trigger fingers. Up to this point, both sides have been able to steadily escalate matters without causing the entire region to erupt in flames. But one of these days someone will push things too far, and then we really will have an apocalyptic scenario on our hands."
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