Trump Called Off Iran Strikes – And Now We Know Why

The United States entered a strike readiness posture against Iran and then stopped - so is it all off or is there more to it? Right, so the US has moved to strike Iran, entered a readiness posture, and then suddenly it stopped. Was it because the forces in place weren’t enough to do it safely? Not all the pieces were on the board perhaps? Well maybe so. The regional bases were exposed, civilian airspace started closing, markets reacted, and only after that did Washington order an aircraft carrier strike group to cross half the planet to catch up with the threat it itself was responsible for making, because there was very much a distinct lack of naval backup. Once you realise the strike couldn’t be launched from where the US already was, suddenly this pause, whilst a strike group makes its way to the Middle East makes more sense. Those statements stop behaving like decisions and start behaving like stalling, and the people calling this restraint need to explain why hardware only starts moving after the threat has apparently now fizzled out. So has Trump had his bluff called by Israel, or has he simply realised he was going to attack Iran from the worst position possible? Right, so Trump has been threatening “strong action” against Iran, and then the most useful thing for any threat merchant to discover has happened: the physical conditions for a clean opening move weren’t there waiting for him. A US aircraft carrier strike group, that of the USS Abraham Lincoln has been ordered away from the South China Sea and is heading towards West Asia, with reporting that puts its arrival in the region at least a week away, and with all the accompanying destroyers named in that reporting, a full strike group, the type of thing that moves when you mean business, not just to flex. This is a deployment being briefed into the public record. The story is not a single decision, or a single phone call, or one of those “at this time” moments, it is a real repositioning of heavy kit because the existing situation for the US in the Middle East was not been enough to make the threat as credible as perhaps some might have wished and that’s before you even get onto the part where civilian airspace has been closing and rerouting in the background, as airlines hedge their bets that this isn’t a safe place to fly.