The White House is likely unaware it lacks the resources needed for an extended military campaign, an American official has told the paper<\/p>\n
The US and Iran are on the precipice of all out conflict, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing sources familiar with discussions in the While House. According to the paper\u2019s sources, Washington is ramping up its air war assets in the Middle East.
\nThe warning comes as the Pentagon confirmed that at least four US service members had been killed after Iranian forces launched retaliatory strikes on American military facilities in the region. According to the New York Times, US forces were hit by Iranian missile and drone attacks several times over the past week, wounding dozens of troops and damaging several Black Hawk helicopters.
\nAs both sides escalate strikes on civilian and military targets, the Pentagon is boosting the number of military aircraft in the Middle East, according to the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe US is planning for a wider war,\u201d an unnamed US official told the paper, while warning that the American military effort would be limited by dwindling air defense interceptor and missile supplies, which had been actively used up during the previous stages of the war.
\n\u201cWe do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don\u2019t think the White House is aware of that,\u201d the official told the Post. Military experts cited in the report said Washington remains unprepared for potential ground operations inside Iran\u2013an option US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out.<\/p>\n
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On Friday, Axios reported that Washington had notified Israel that it was sending dozens of additional refueling planes ahead of a possible expansion of operations against Iran. According to the article, Trump was presented with several new military options, including strikes on Iranian power plants and further attacks on nuclear sites to bury Tehran\u2019s stockpile of enriched uranium even deeper.
\nSaeid Golkar, an expert on Iran\u2019s security services, told the Wall Street Journal that the situtation risks getting completely out of hand. \u201cThis escalation is rapidly intensifying and getting out of control,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a risk we will go back to a total war even if neither side wants it.\u201d
\nA CNN analysis suggested that \u201ca decisive US military victory over Iran seems a distant prospect.\u201d In echoing remarks, Sina Toosi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that a ground operation \u201cin extreme summer heat… against a fully mobilized military and a population that has largely rallied around the war effort, would be an extraordinary gamble practically guaranteed to be a historic disaster.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, despite Trump\u2019s assurances that the US had already crippled Iran\u2019s war potential, several US media outlets reported that Washington is growing concerned about the Iranian military\u2019s increasing effectiveness at penetrating American air defenses with missile strikes.
\nAsked by RT to comment on the potential expansion of the war, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said that \u201cthe responsibility… rests exclusively with the United States.\u201d He went on to urge regional powers to \u201cprevent the US from using their territory and facilities to attack\u201d Iran, saying that Tehran\u2019s retaliatory strikes were in self-defense.
\nThe current escalation follows the collapse of a fragile ceasefire earlier this month due to the escalation in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump declared the truce \u201cover,\u201d calling Iran\u2019s leaders \u201csick people\u201d and threatening to reimpose a naval blockade of the waterway. Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry called the renewed US strikes a \u201cgross violation\u201d of the ceasefire memorandum, vowing its armed forces would defend the country\u2019s territorial integrity and national security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The White House is likely unaware it lacks the resources needed for an extended military campaign, an American official has told the paper The US and Iran are on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}