The Iranian government is weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades but it wants to rebuild its military forces and may still try to obtain a nuclear weapon, the Pentagon said on Friday.
In its annual National Defence Strategy, which sets the Defence Department's priorities for the coming year, the Trump administration said US forces had “obliterated” Iran's nuclear programme during Operation Midnight Hammer last June. The document also said Israeli attacks had devastated Iran's Axis of Resistance and severely degraded Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Even so, although Iran has suffered severe setbacks over recent months, it appears intent on reconstituting its conventional military forces,” the 34-page strategy notes. “Iran’s leaders have also left open the possibility that they will try again to obtain a nuclear weapon, including by refusing to engage in meaningful negotiations.”
The language comes as tensions between Washington and Tehran simmer. Last week, it appeared that a US intended to topple Iran's government was imminent, after President Donald Trump told Iranians that “help is on its way” as they protested across the country in demonstrations that security forces suppressed.
But Mr Trump appeared to relent after he said the Iranian government had told him they would not execute protesters. One possible explanation is that the Pentagon does not have enough military firepower in the region to carry out an although, though that is about to change as the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group heads towards the Middle East. Mr Trump on Thursday said that an “armada” was on its way.
The US cannot “ignore the facts that the Iranian regime has the blood of Americans on its hands,” the Defence Strategy states.
A senior Iranian official on Friday said that any US strike against Iran would be considered an act of “all-out war”.
“This time, we take any attack – limited, unlimited, surgical, kinetic, whatever they call it – as an all-out war against us, and we will respond the hardest way possible,” the official told reporters in New York.
The strategy is notable for its America First language, criticising Nato allies for taking a “free ride” and blaming earlier US administrations for squandering America's military advantages “and the lives, goodwill, and resources of our people in grandiose nation-building projects and self-congratulatory pledges to uphold cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.”
The strategy also takes a less confrontational tone against China and Russia than before.
