

The moment of reckoning between America and Iran
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A BIT OF sabre-rattling can be useful in foreign policy. Too much of it, though, and the sabre is liable to end up pointing back at you.
That is where America finds itself after a two-month standoff with Iran. Donald Trump, the president, has ordered an enormous military build-up in the Middle East—by some measures the biggest in two decades. Yet he has seemed unwilling to order a risky strike.
Nor have his threats yet compelled Iran to negotiate a deal that would prevent one. Now he is left with a difficult choice: order an attack anyway, or beat an embarrassing retreat. This crisis, the latest of many in America’s tortured history with the Islamic Republic, began in late December when a wave of protests erupted in Iran.
Mr Trump warned the regime not to kill protesters. If it did, he said, America would come to their rescue. The regime ignored him and murdered at least 7,000 people, probably many thousands more.
America was in no place to attack, though: it did not even have an aircraft-carrier in the region. It is no longer so constrained. The USS Abraham Lincoln reached the Arabian Sea in late January.
A second carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, was ordered to the region last week. It passed through the Strait of Gibraltar on February 17th and should arrive within days. Meanwhile, dozens of warplanes flew across the Atlantic this week—from F-35s, the newest fighter jet in America’s arsenal, to the E-3s used for airborne surveillance.
Accompanying them were a number of aerial-refuelling tankers. Not since it invaded Iraq in 2003 has America deployed such an airborne arsenal to the Middle East. When it bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer, it was a one-and-done affair: seven B-2
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