The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers accompanying it provide the U.S. the ability to strike Iran, particularly as Gulf Arab states have signaled they want to stay out of any attack despite hosting American military personnel.
Two Iranian-backed militias in the Mideast have signaled their willingness to launch new attacks, likely trying to back Iran after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military action over the killing of peaceful protesters or Tehran launching mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to drag the entire Mideast into a war, though its air defenses and military are still reeling after the June war launched by Israel against the country. But the pressure on its economy may spark new unrest as everyday goods slowly go out of reach of its people — particularly if Trump chooses to attack.
Ambrey, a private security firm, issued a notice Tuesday saying it assessed that the U.S. “has positioned sufficient military capability to conduct kinetic operations against Iran while maintaining the ability to defend itself and regional allies from reciprocal action.”
“Supporting or avenging Iranian protesters in punitive strikes is assessed as insufficient justification for sustained military conflict,” Ambrey wrote. “However, alternative objectives, such as the degradation of Iranian military capabilities, may increase the likelihood of limited U.S. intervention.”
Activists offer new death toll
Tuesday's new figures came from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of unrest in Iran. The group verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran.
It identified the dead as including at least 5,777 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 86 children and 49 civilians who weren't demonstrating. The crackdown has seen over 41,800 arrests, it added.
The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll given authorities cutting off the internet and disrupting calls into the Islamic Republic.
Iran's government has put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, and labeled the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.
That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The protests in Iran began on Dec. 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. They were met by a violent crackdown by Iran’s theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two weeks of internet blackout — the most comprehensive in its history.
