Washington
\nThe US military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of President Donald Trump\u2019s new strategy, which promises a far more confrontational approach to Tehran.<\/p>\n
Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on Friday in defiance of other world powers, choosing not to certify that Tehran is complying with the deal and warning he might ultimately terminate it.<\/p>\n
He also promised to address Iran more broadly, including its support for extremist groups in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defence Department spokesman, told Reuters the Pentagon was assessing the positioning of its forces as well as planning but offered few details.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are identifying new areas where we will work with allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, neutralize its destabilising influences, and constrain its aggressive power projection, particularly its support for terrorist groups and militants,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said his first goal would to talk with US allies in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere to gain a shared understanding of Iran\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly we intend to dissuade them from shipping arms into places like Yemen and explosives into Bahrain and the other things they do with their surrogates, like Lebanese Hezbollah,\u201d Mattis said.<\/p>\n
The US military has long been a strident critic of Iran, accusing it directly and indirectly of trying to undermine the United States and its allies, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.<\/p>\n
The tensions escalated in recent months in Syria, where American pilots shot down two Iranian-made drones this summer.<\/p>\n
Still, a more aggressive approach to Iran could trigger a backlash from Iran\u2019s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and forces that it backs. That includes in Iraq, where US troops are fighting Islamic State and trying to keep their distance from Shi\u2019ite militia aligned with Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cUS forces in Iraq are quite exposed, and coalition forces are quite exposed to the risk of attack if Iranian elements so choose,\u201d said Jennifer Cafarella, lead intelligence planner at the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank in Washington.<\/p>\n
The US military is analyzing an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, that killed an American soldier in Iraq this month. The reappearance of the device, which Iran-backed Shi\u2019ite militia routinely used to target American troops in Iraq before their withdrawal in 2011, has startled US officials.<\/p>\n
CIA Director Mike Pompeo noted the device was detonated in an area controlled by a militia backed by Tehran.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not have evidence of a direct link to Iran, but we are closely examining this tragic incident,\u201d Pompeo said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Cafarella said the killing of the US soldier may have been a warning from Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is possible that the Iranians have been attempting to signal their commitment to retaliate against the US strategy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mattis said the United States was watching for any new provocations from Iran.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he thought Tehran might retaliate, he said: \u201cIt would be ill advised for them to attack us.\u201d Reuters has previously reported that options to increase pressure on Iran include more aggressive US interceptions of Iranian arms shipments, such as those to Houthi rebels in Yemen, It could also direct US naval forces to react more forcefully when harassed by armed IRGC speed boats.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon on Friday detailed a series of major concern about Iran, including its ballistic missile development and cyber attacks against the United States and US allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington The US military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of President Donald Trump\u2019s new strategy, which promises a far more confrontational approach to Tehran. Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on Friday in defiance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7621,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7619\/revisions\/7621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}