WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has suddenly sent home the aircraft carrier Nimitz from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, signaling a reversal of a week-long muscle flexion strategy aimed at deterring Iran from deploying US troops and attack diplomats in the Persian Gulf. .
Officials said on Friday that the acting secretary of defense, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the ship to be partially redeployed as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to prevent it from getting into a crisis in President Trump’s dwindling days. ended up in office. U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its allies may be preparing for a strike this weekend over the death of ward Gen. To avenge Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Corps.
Senior Pentagon officials say Miller is considering that the dispatch of the Nimitz could now, before the first commemoration this Sunday of the death of General Suleimani in a US drone attack in Iraq, remove what Iranian runners see as a provocation which justifies their threats against Americans. military targets. Some analysts have said that the return of the Nimitz to its home Bremerton, Washington, was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.
“If the Nimitz leaves, it could be because the Pentagon believes the threat could subside somewhat,” said Michael P. Mulroy, the former Pentagon senior Middle East official.
According to critics, the mixed messages are another example of the inexperience and confusing decision-making in the Pentagon since Mr. Trump, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, and some of his top aides resigned in November, replacing them with Miller, a former White House Assistant to Terrorism and several Trump loyalists.
“This decision sends a mixed signal to Iran at best and reduces our range of options at exactly the wrong time,” said Matthew Spence, a former Middle East top official in the Pentagon. “This raises a serious doubt as to what the administration’s strategy is here.”
The order of mr. Miller received a request from Genl. Kenneth F. McKenzie jr., The commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, to expand the deployment of the Nimitz and keep its formidable wing attack aircraft ready, overturned.
Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran on Twitter in the past few times, and in November, top national security assistants spoke to the president about a preventative strike against an Iranian nuclear website. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Miller to send the Nimitz home.
The Pentagon and General McKenzie’s central order has been making several violent revelations for weeks to warn Tehran of the consequences of any assault. The Nimitz and other warships showed up to provide air cover for US troops withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The air force sent three B-52 bombers to fly within 60 kilometers of the Iranian coast. And the navy announced for the first time in almost a decade that it had ordered a submarine of Tomahawk missiles in the Persian Gulf.
Already on Wednesday, General McKenzie warned the Iranians and their compatriots of the Shia militia in Iraq against any attacks surrounding the commemoration of the death of General Suleimani on January 3.
But on Thursday, senior military advisers, including General McKenzie and Genl. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, surprised by the decision of mr. Miller over the Nimitz.
The navy tried to limit more expansions to the carrier’s already protracted deployment, but commanders believed the warship would remain for a few more days to help counter what military intelligence analysts saw as a growing and looming threat.
U.S. intelligence analysts have said in recent days that they have detected Iranian air defenses, maritime forces and other security units on higher alert. They also noted that Iran has moved more short-range missiles and drones to Iraq. But senior Defense Department officials acknowledge that they can not know whether Iran or its Shia representatives in Iraq are ready to strike US troops or prepare defensive measures in case Mr. Trump does not order a preventative attack on them.
“What you have here is a classic security dilemma, where maneuvers on both sides can be misread and the risks of miscalculation increased,” said Brett H. McGurk, a former Trump envoy to the coalition to defeat the Islamic State. , said.
Some top assistants for Mr. Miller, including Ezra Cohen-Watnick, one of the White House loyalists newly installed as the Pentagon’s top official in intelligence policy, has raised doubts about the deterrent value of the Nimitz, especially if it is balanced against the moral cost of expanding it tour. Some aides also questioned the threat of any attack by Iran or its proxy, a rating reported by CNN earlier.
Pentagon officials said they had sent additional rural fighter jets and attack aircraft, as well as refueling aircraft, to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to compensate for the loss of Nimitz firepower.
On Friday, the top commander of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Corps said his country was fully prepared to respond to any US military pressure amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington in the dwindling days of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“Today we have no problem, concern or fear of experiencing any forces,” Major General Hossein Salami said during a ceremony at the University of Tehran to commemorate the anniversary of General Suleimani.
“We will give our last words to our enemies on the battlefield,” General Salami said, without mentioning the United States directly.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, said on Thursday that the Trump administration was creating a pretext for war.
“Instead of fighting Covid in the US, @realDonaldTrump & cohorts are wasting billions flying B52s and sending armadas to OUR region,” Zarif said in a tweet. ‘Intelligence from Iraq indicates a conspiracy to make a pretext for war. Iran does not seek war, but will defend its people, security and vital interests OPENLY AND DIRECTLY. ”
In another provocation from Iran on Friday, Tehran informed international inspectors that it was about to produce uranium at a significantly higher enrichment level at Fordow, a plant that is deep under a mountain and therefore more difficult to to fall. The move appears to be primarily aimed at putting pressure on Pres. Joseph R. Biden Jr. to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran. There were few activities allowed in the Fordow plant under the 2015 agreement.
In the notice to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the United Nations group overseeing the production of nuclear material, it is said that Iran will resume production of uranium with 20 percent purity. This is the highest level it has reached before the nuclear deal, which at the time justified the country as essential to making medical isotopes for its Tehran research reactor.
Fuel enriched up to that level is not sufficient to produce a bomb, but it is close. It requires relatively little further enrichment to reach the 90 percent purity traditionally used for fuel in bomb grade.
The move was not unexpected. The Iranian parliament recently passed legislation requiring the government to increase both the amount of fuel it produces and the level of enrichment. But the choice to do the production at Fordow, its newest facility, was telling. The plant was built deep under a mountain on a well-protected base of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and to succeed it would require repeated attacks with the largest bunker bomb in the US arsenal.
It will take months for Iran to produce a significant amount of fuel at the 20 percent enrichment level, but the mere announcement could be another red flag for Mr. Trump to rekindle bomb options.
David E. Sanger contribution made.