Pentagon Reverses Anti-Iran Buildup, Says Coronavirus Has Weakened Iran

Iran's focus is internal during coronavirus

After months of building up US forces in the frontier around Iran, nominally to counter an Iranian threat, the Pentagon is now quietly reversing course, conceding that Iran isn’t nearly the threat they’d presented it as.

Interestingly, Pentagon officials are being quoted as attributing this to the coronavirus, arguing it has devastated Iran, greatly limiting the Iranian ability to retaliate to US actions, and leading Iran to take a more internal focus.

Coronavirus has hit Iran relatively hard, and is a major focus for the country, as it is for many other countries. It seems to have been unexpected for the Pentagon that anything but the US military might be the real primary focus of a nation like Iran.

Either way, the Pentagon seems to make its decision that Iran is a threat or not a threat more or less independent of anything Iran actually does, and deciding that they are less of a threat is a generally positive thing, facilitating US drawdowns from the region, and possibly a more peaceful region.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.