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Press Freedom Defense Fund

Iran War Has the U.S. Military on the Brink of a “Breakdown”

As the U.S. military faces relentless attacks on its bases, the Iran conflict is “ultimately unsustainable,” one U.S. official told The Intercept.

The U.S. military is straining under the pressures of the Iran war, according to two U.S. officials familiar with operations in the Middle East. One cautioned that this stress could lead to a “breakdown” in the military’s ability to effectively continue a war that President Donald Trump said would end in early April.

As the conflict has engulfed the region, the military has grappled with a growing list of challenges: Iranian attacks on U.S. bases and warships in the Middle East, depleted stockpiles of defensive munitions, increasing casualties, maintenance issues on ships, lengthy troop deployments, complicated logistics, flagging morale and a host of other issues that have taken a heavy toll on troops, damaged military readiness, and a strained Pentagon budget — contradicting moths of rosy pronouncements by the Trump administration.

Both officials said that Iran is facing extreme economic pressure, according to intelligence reports. The first official characterized recent Iranian attacks on warships with ballistic missiles as a “go for broke” strategy to increase economic pressures on America ahead of the U.S. midterms. That official said it was unclear which country would “blink first.”

Trump suggested on Sunday that the U.S. could “stay and keep the oil” in Iran, like the neo-colonial resource grab the administration is carrying out in Venezuela. The second official said that a U.S. occupation of Iran would be “almost impossible” and that the idea was “nonsensical obviously.”

Iran’s ability to overwhelm U.S. air defenses in the Middle East using attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles, as previously reported by The Intercept, has left the U.S. military in a precarious state. The Trump administration failed to appreciate Iran’s military prowess, said the first official. The other pointed to a “complete lack of planning” for the war. Since July 7 alone, there have been hundreds of U.S. casualties caused by Iranian attacks, according to official Pentagon statistics.

The officials said the military’s ability to function at peak capacity was crippled in the opening hours of the conflict when an Iranian missile and drone attack on February 28 destroyed Navy facilities in Manama, Bahrain, the region’s most critical logistics hub. The Pentagon claimed for months that the strikes did not significantly impact military operations, but last week acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao admitted “they blew the hell out of Bahrain.” More than six months after the attack, Naval Support Activity Bahrain remains a shambles. “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s highest-ranking officer, during a recent town hall.

A Wall Street Journal investigation previously found that rebuilding the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, barracks, and communication towers at NSA Bahrain may cost more than $400 million, which the second official said could be an underestimate if it’s ever attempted. Naval Forces Central Command referred questions about the cost estimate to Central Command, which did not respond.

Trump has touted the destruction of Iran’s navy as one of his signature accomplishments of the war, but the officials pointed to the severe strain placed on U.S. naval forces in the region. With the home of the Fifth Fleet knocked out and other ports in the region within range of Iranian missiles and drones, the Navy found itself facing the daunting challenge of maintaining a flotilla of more than 24 ships — including two massive aircraft carriers and numerous guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, attack submarines, or supply ships deployed at any one time.

While aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, the planes and helicopters on them, as well as the other ships,........

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