The US is evaluating a range of military options available to attack Iran, amid growing tension between the countries. According to the newspaper The New York TimesPresident Donald Trump received in recent days an expanded list of possible actions aimed at causing further damage to the country’s nuclear and missile facilities or weakening the Iranian supreme leader.
These new options even include the possibility of American forces carrying out raids on targets inside Iran, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The Trump administration is also considering new attacks against Iran’s nuclear program, months after the operations in June last year, as well as against more symbolic targets, such as the headquarters of the militia responsible for much of the repression of protests that began in December.
Another option evaluated would be to attack military targets and other leadership figures, an action that would aim to provoke strong instability at the top of the regime to the point of creating the necessary conditions for Iranian security forces or other forces to remove the 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to the Times, Israel would also be pressuring the US to carry out a new joint operation, focusing on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which intelligence officials say the country has largely rebuilt since the 12-day war in June last year.
A White House source told the Times that Trump is aware that a military operation in Iran will be much more complex than the one carried out by the US in Venezuela. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate that he imagined “it would be even much more complex” to manage regime change in Iran than in Venezuela.
For that reason, Trump is still evaluating the range of options that could be pursued together or in some combination, the sources said.
American forces have long trained for specialized missions, such as entering countries like Iran, officials said, aimed at attacking nuclear facilities or other high-value targets.
