The US military is preparing for the possibility that the US-Israeli war against Iran lasts until September of this year, according to a report from POLITICO, far beyond President Trump’s initial four-week timeline.
The report said that US Central Command is asking the Pentagon to send more intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days, but likely through September.
The news of the Pentagon preparing for a long war comes as US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said that the US is sending more forces to the Middle East and will be escalating its bombing campaign.
“More bombers, fighters are arriving just today. And now with complete control of the skies, we will be using 500-pound, 1000-pound, and 2000-pound GPS-and-laser-guided precision gravity bombs, which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile,” Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Hegseth has also declined to set a timeline on the war. “You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three,” he said. “Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo. The enemy is off balance, and we’re going to keep them off balance.”
So far, more than 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed by US-Israeli strikes, and at least six US soldiers have been killed by Iranian drone attacks. The Pentagon is working to get more missiles and air-defense munitions into the region, as its stockpiles have quickly dwindled after the first five days of war.
The POLITICO report also detailed how the State Department was scrambling to get stranded Americans out of the Middle East as the administration had no evacuation plan despite a months-long military buildup in the region and Trump’s constant threats to bomb Iran.
