Escalation watch: Iran is reportedly ready to strike U.S. military bases in the Middle East should President Trump decide to enter Israel’s war with Iran, U.S. officials told the New York Times Tuesday.
However, “Iran’s missile barrages in the recent conflict are much smaller compared to its barrages in its October 2024 attack on Israel,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Tuesday evening assessment. This apparent reduction in Iranian missile counter-attacks suggests Israeli strikes (like this) so far have been considerably effective against Iranian missile launchers. Consider, ISW writes, “Iran launched around 200 ballistic missiles in two waves in October 2024, whereas Iran used 30 to 40 missiles per barrage on June 16. Iran used 20 missiles in its largest barrage and two missiles in its smallest barrage on June 17, moreover.”
New: The U.S. military has reportedly withdrawn from two more of its bases inside Syria, Reuters reported Tuesday. The Al-Wazir and Tel Baydar bases are both in northeastern Syria. U.S. troops have now withdrawn from four bases inside Syria since Trump took office, according to Reuters.
Why it matters: “Several Kurdish officials told Reuters that Islamic State [militants] had already begun moving more openly around U.S. bases which had recently been shuttered, including near the cities of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, once strongholds for the extremist group.” More, here.
Developing: More U.S. military assets have arrived to the region, as open-source watchers like Avi Scharf of Haaretz shared on social media early Wednesday. He spotted the movement of several C-17 cargo planes, and speculated about the possible transit of F-22s and F-16s.
Coverage continues after the jump…
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1981, the U.S. Air Force’s F-117 Nighthawk flew for the first time.
Heads up: “Israel doesn’t have the massive munition it would take to destroy [Iran’s] Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, or the aircraft needed to deliver it. Only the U.S. does,” Lita Baldor of the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“The Air Force’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only aircraft that can carry the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, known as the bunker buster,” Baldor writes. “There are currently no B-2 bombers in the Middle East region, although there are B-52 bombers based at Diego Garcia, and they can deliver smaller munitions. If tapped for use, the B-2 bombers would have to make the 30-hour round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, refueling multiple times.”
For the record: U.S. “Fighter jets have joined in launching strikes to defend Israel, but officials said Tuesday that no American aircraft were over Iran,” according to Baldor. Read more about additional U.S. military assets in the region, here.
By the way: CENTCOM chief Gen. Erik Kurilla has reportedly had “nearly all” his requests approved by the White House in the current conflict, according to Politico. Also worth noting: “Kurilla’s arguments to send more U.S. weapons to the region, including air defenses, have gone against Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, who have urged caution in overcommitting to the Middle East.”
ICYMI: Trump dangled the threat of assassination over Iran’s leader, writing on social media Tuesday, “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding…We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers.” Trump on Monday used social media to ominously instruct Tehran’s 10 million residents to “immediately evacuate” the city, without exactly saying why. He later wrote in a separate, much-shorter post Tuesday, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
Iran’s POV: “The Iranian nation cannot be surrendered,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised statement Wednesday. “The Americans should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” he added.
Latest from Trump: “I may do it,” he told reporters on the White House lawn Wednesday regarding the U.S. military joining Israel’s war. “I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
Second opinion: “Donald Trump appears to be about to take the country to war in Iran,” warns media watchdog Dan Froomkin, writing Tuesday. “That could range from sending B-2s to blow up Iran’s heavily bunkered nuclear facility, to killing the Iranian leader, to bombing Tehran (‘evacuate immediately,’ he posted on Monday).”
“I would like reporters to clarify that bombing Iran is, indeed, an act of war—and that it is Congress, not the president, that has the constitutional authority to declare war,” Froomkin says. He continues, “I want journalists to remember the lessons that should have been learned after Vietnam, and then again after Iraq, and demand answers of public officials before the war—if there’s still time. That means insisting that officials prove to the public that going to war will make things better rather than worse—and that it’s not just about satisfying some short-term urge.” Continue reading, here.
Additional reading (via Elizabeth Saunders of Columbia University):
- “Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong,” by Alexander B. Downes of George Washington University, published December 2021;
- “Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict,” by Jessica L. Weeks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, writing in 2012;
- “Coercion and the Credibility of Assurances,” by researchers Matthew D. Cebul, Allan Dafoe, and Nuno P. Monteiro, writing in July 2021;
- “The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon,” by Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in February;
- “Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation,” by Vipin Narang of MIT, writing in January 2022;
- And “Influence without Arms:The New Logic of Nuclear Deterrence,” from Matthew Fuhrmann of Texas A&M University, writing in October.
Around the Defense Department
Today on Capitol Hill, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine are discussing the Defense Department’s budget request before the Senate Committee on Armed Services. That began at 9:30 a.m. ET; livestream what’s left, here.
Also: Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and service chief Gen. Randy George are discussing the Army’s budget request before Senate appropriators’ defense subcommittee. Livestream here.
Coming soon: the submariner nominated to end the unprecedented gap between CNOs. It’s Adm. Daryl Caudle, who has led Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., since 2021, and earlier in his career commanded three attack submarines, an unusual achievement. USNI News has a bit more.
Caudle’s name began surfacing as a CNO candidate last month, when Politico wrote that he “has been unusually blunt in calling out failures in the defense industrial base. ‘I am not forgiving of the fact they’re not delivering the ordnance we need,’ Caudle said in 2023 when defense contractors were slow to restock the Navy’s depleted weapons arsenal. He has also criticized the service’s lack of public shipyards to maintain warships and said the Navy should be ‘embarrassed’ that it can’t develop lasers to provide air defense aboard ships.”
Trump moved Greenland to NORTHCOM. DOD announced Tuesday that the Danish territory, long under the U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility, has been moved to Northern Command’s AOR to “strengthen the Joint Force’s ability to defend the U.S. homeland.” Unmentioned went Trump’s imperialist designs on the world’s largest island.
The Army heads toward 100,000 artillery shells per month. The service has nearly tripled its production of 155mm howitzer shells since the Ukraine war began, millions of which have been sent to that country’s front lines. It’s going to miss its goal of making 100,000 per month by October, but likely by just a few months. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports, here.
China in space
Space is increasingly looking like the South China Sea—that is, a domain for gray-zone warfare, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports from the 8th annual Space Security Conference in Prague.
The gist: “China describes its space activity—including the deployment of highly maneuverable satellites, satellites equipped with robotic arms, and moon missions—as nonmilitary. But officials from the United States and Taiwan, as well as independent space experts, worry that China is ‘rehearsing’ how to use satellites as space weapons in the opening days of an invasion. They also fear China is positioning itself to press other nations into accepting whatever space activities Beijing defines as ‘normal.’ Read on, here.
European cooperation
France and Germany are bickering in public over workshare for Europe’s next-gen fighter program, a dynamic that doesn’t bode well for the continent’s efforts to build up military capability. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more on that from the Paris Air Show, here.
Admin note: Thursday is Juneteenth, a federal holiday. So we’ll see you again on Friday!
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