US and Iran on Brink of All-Out Conflict After Retaliatory Strikes

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 White House. According to the paper’s sources, Washington is ramping up its air war assets in the Middle East.

The 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.

As 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.

“The US is planning for a wider war,” 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.

“We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official told the Post. Military experts cited in the report said Washington remains unprepared for potential ground operations inside Iran–an option US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out.

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’s stockpile of enriched uranium even deeper.

Saeid Golkar, an expert on Iran’s security services, told the Wall Street Journal that the situtation risks getting completely out of hand. “This escalation is rapidly intensifying and getting out of control,” he said. “There is a risk we will go back to a total war even if neither side wants it.”

A CNN analysis suggested that “a decisive US military victory over Iran seems a distant prospect.” In echoing remarks, Sina Toosi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that a ground operation “in 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.”

Meanwhile, despite Trump’s assurances that the US had already crippled Iran’s war potential, several US media outlets reported that Washington is growing concerned about the Iranian military’s increasing effectiveness at penetrating American air defenses with missile strikes.

Asked by RT to comment on the potential expansion of the war, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said that “the responsibility... rests exclusively with the United States.” He went on to urge regional powers to “prevent the US from using their territory and facilities to attack” Iran, saying that Tehran’s retaliatory strikes were in self-defense.

The 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 “over,” calling Iran’s leaders “sick people” and threatening to reimpose a naval blockade of the waterway. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the renewed US strikes a “gross violation” of the ceasefire memorandum, vowing its armed forces would defend the country’s territorial integrity and national security.