Huge scale of US military build - up increases likelihood of attack on Iran

irishtimes.com · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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The US has amassed a vast military force in the Middle East as president Donald Trump warned Iran to reach a deal on its nuclear programme within a “maximum” of 15 days or “bad things will happen”.The American build-up is enough to sustain a weeks-long air campaign and its sheer scale and swiftness make an attack appear more likely, according to former Pentagon officials and national security experts.The Middle East deployments have echoes of the US’s military movements in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are larger than the recent American build-up in the Caribbean ahead of the capture of strongman president Nicolás Maduro.“This is a build-up like what we saw right before the Iraq war” in 2003, particularly in terms of air power, said Becca Wasser, a military strategy expert at the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank.Dana Stroul, former US deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, said the moves were “definitely greater than the recent Caribbean build-up”.“It is an incredibly significant military build-up in a very short period of time” and demonstrates “how invested Trump is in showing a tangible outcome to the current crisis” in the region, she added.The US president has said any military action would be “traumatic” and worse than the strikes he ordered on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.“We’re either going to get a deal or it’s going to be unfortunate for them,” Trump said on Thursday.Dozens of refuelling and transport aircraft have crossed the Atlantic this week. Data from Flightradar24 shows 39 airborne tankers being repositioned to locations closer to the potential theatre of action in the past three days. A further 29 heavy-lift aircraft, such as the C-17 Globemaster III, have made runs to Europe in that time.Six journeys into Europe this month started in Fort Hood, home to the 69th Air Defence Artillery Brigade. It operates both the Patriot and Thaad systems which can defend allies and US forces against missile and aircraft attack. One C-17 delivery from Fort Hood went to Jordan.[ Trump says next 10 days will decide if US strikes IranOpens in new window ]Wasser said the US had put in place an “amount of key enablers” necessary to execute an extended strike campaign that makes it a “very serious build-up”, which is “potentially more than just bluster”.Those movements include airborne early-warning and control aircraft.The USS Gerald R Ford, one of the world’s largest aircraft carriers, is en route to the Middle East. Photograph: Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press/AP The US has at least a dozen ships in the region, including an aircraft carrier and eight destroyers, according to the US Navy, as well as three littoral combat ships that have been converted into minesweepers.The US’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, and three additional destroyers were also en route to the Middle East.The naval presence in the region is expected to increase further, according to a person familiar with the matter.An analysis of recent satellite images confirmed the positions of the USS Lincoln carrier off the coast of Oman. An AIS tracking signal from the USS Gerald R Ford carrier strike group was detected off the western coast of Africa on Wednesday afternoon.This is such a massive build-up that it almost speaks to the fact that there needs to be strikes, or else this is going to be one of the costliest bluffs in US history— Becca WasserBoth aircraft carriers have thousands of troops and dozens of fighter jets on board. The US has also deployed additional fighter aircraft and Thaad and Patriot air defences to bases in the region.Trump has said he could potentially use the joint US-UK base at Diego Garcia – which is about 5,200km from Tehran – to launch attacks, something London has signalled reluctance about.An American campaign could last for weeks, Wasser said. But she added that the US could also find itself “mired over a much longer period of time, despite Trump campaigning on the end to America’s forever wars, particularly in the Middle East”.There have already been confrontations between the US military and Iranian forces. The US this month shot down a Shahed drone that approached the Abraham Lincoln carrier. On the same day, members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to board and seize a US-flagged tanker, prompting a US destroyer to respond.“The risk of miscalculation and misunderstanding is incredibly high right now,” Stroul said.The build-up cannot be sustained indefinitely, said Wasser, due to the high costs. The Caribbean build-up cost the US almost $3 billion (€2.54 billion) from late August to early February, according to her calculations.“This is such a massive build-up that it almost speaks to the fact that there needs to be strikes, or else this is going to be one of the costliest bluffs in US history,” Wasser added.The countdown to any US strikes will begin when the Gerald R Ford carrier moves into place, according to Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official.The carrier has been deployed for seven months and “cannot hang around”, he said.There is also pressure to return the Abraham Lincoln to the Pacific, where there are no US carriers while Chinese counterparts are at sea.The US military deployments came even as US and Iranian officials held indirect talks in Geneva this week in search of a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme. Both sides reported “progress” following the meeting but said they remain far apart on certain issues. On Friday Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghi said he hoped to have a proposal for a nuclear deal with the US in the coming days to prevent “an unnecessary and disastrous war”. “It seems unlikely to me that Trump is going to deem whatever they put on offer at the negotiating table sufficient given the level of military investment he has made,” Stroul said.Fears are rising in Iran that the country could be subject to a larger-scale attack than those by Israel and the US in June 2025.The Parchin military complex was hit by Israeli strikes in October 2024. Since then, satellite images have detected construction of a metal roof followed by a concrete cover to help protect the facility from aerial attacks.The Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities, which were hit in the US bombing last year, suffered major damage to several buildings. Recent satellite imagery reveals that reconstruction is under way at both sites.Iran’s Revolutionary Guards this week conducted a naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime trade route. That was followed by Iranian and Russian naval drills in the Islamic republic’s southern waters on Thursday.The Quds, a conservative online news outlet, wrote on Thursday that the message of the drills was that “Iran’s coasts are no place for the enemy’s surfing”.“The drill with Russia will help foil the enemy’s psychological warfare,” it added.- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026