WASHINGTON – The United States is gravely concerned Iran will lash out with a brutal reprisal in the coming days over this week’s Israeli strike that decimated its elite forces in Syria. American intelligence suggests the Islamic Republic’s not-to-be-trifled-with Revolutionary Guards are urgently devising a “significant” retaliatory assault aimed at U.S. or Israeli assets across the tinderbox Middle East region.
High-level officials told this newspaper the White House and its allies have reluctantly accepted that an Iranian counterpunch is now inevitable and likely imminent after the bombing raid killed several senior Iranian commanders. The two countries are in a frenzied race against the doomsday clock to preemptively bolster their defenses and defensively reposition troops and military hardware before the powder keg inevitably ignites.
“Iran’s thirst for payback is insatiable after such a disastrous black eye undermining its hard power ambitions,” a senior U.S. official warned on condition of anonymity due to the operation’s sensitivity. “Doubling down on deterrence is their only option left on the table after Israel smashed its prestige and we all know the actions of cornered animals are impossible to predict.”
The White House has not just rung the alarm bells, but clanged them at a deafening volume and set them clamoring across the halls of government in anticipation of Iranian wrath being unleashed within a week’s time, possibly sooner. Persistent intelligence chatter suggests Iran is hastily marshaling its asymmetric warfare capabilities to retaliate against U.S. soldiers, bases, warships or even diplomatic sites potentially stretching from Syria to the Persian Gulf’s restive waters.
But what truly has the Pentagon and America’s intel domains trembling is the doomsday scenario of Iran’s proxies – like Yemen’s Houthis or Iraq’s pro-Iranian militias – gifting Israel a torrent of rockets from multiple fronts. That could inadvertently trigger the flames of a raging regional inferno which quickly spins out of control into broader conflagration after sputtering attempts at de-escalation collapse like a doomed ceasefire collapsing amid the fog of escalation.
To avert such an apocalypse now, President Biden has urgently consulted with his Israeli counterpart Bibi Netanyahu in hopes of choreographing lockstep defenses should Iran opt for a frontal assault. Yet both Washington and Tel Aviv remain unsettlingly uncertain of Iran’s precise timing and battle plan for extracting its pound of flesh, though few doubt the revolutionary zealots’ inexhaustible zeal for recompense, by any means inherently messy.
In a gravely foreboding address, Iran’s supremo Ayatollah Khamenei castigated the “criminal Zionist regime” for killing his nation’s sons while ominously warning of imminent harsh “revenge” to gasping hardliner crowds baying for blood. These inflammatory comments swiftly prompted U.S. officials to bluntly warn Tehran’s mullahs against escalating into open war yet caution that defensively preparedness was the wisest approach until the crisis passes.
An Israeli strike just days ago on Iran’s diplomatic mission in Damascus killed at least seven highly-prized Iranian operatives from its Quds Force – an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards actively projecting power regionally. This brazen decapitation of Iran’s strategic brain trust for orchestrating its network of proxy militia groups across the Levant represents a crippling loss of experienced personnel that will reverberate across multiple frontlines.
Yet Tehran bellicosely couched Monday’s bombing raid as an unforgivable assault on its sovereign soil, despite Damascus hosting Iran’s strikes against Israel. As such, the hardline theocratic regime has promised it will not allow such criminal impunity and restraint is no longer prudent after mourning its latest martyrs – both of whom were Quds Forces bigwigs with American blood on their hands.
With the U.S. now hoisting its military shields while Tehran masses its ideological irregulars on the worst funk, many worry this rapidly deteriorating crisis is drifting perilously towards the point of no return.
