lot of blog buzz about Iran, its rejection of the UN nuclear enrichment curtailment, attack on Romanian oil platform (?) and arabist doom'n'gloom about August 22nd being some symbolic date...
it is new moon, which is the most opportunistic time for US air strikes, should they be so inclined
only two more new moons before the Nov elections, and the Oct new moon is embarrasingly close to the election dates; and, of course, no one puts out new policies in August, everyone is on vacation
should the US decide to something silly and pre-emptive, it'd need at least three carriers in the gulf or Indian ocean. By my count, there should have been only two carrier groups there Enterprise and Kitty Hawk (?) - although one might be further east. The Iwo Jima group is in the Red Sea, and there are two carriers in the Atlantic.
But, the USS Reagan is closed due to operational commitments - is it at sea? Or still in San Diego as it was last week?
And the USS Stennis was visiting Canada last week, but I don't know where it is now. Anyone seen it in harbour this week? US Navy web site says neither is underway.
Interesting times. For what it is worth, I don't see the US has the assets in place to do anything drastically stupid right now, but then I've been wrong before.
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Wouldn't Kandahar or other Afghan air bases be close enough if using Air Force jets (117s or the like, dunno if F-35s would be an option)? Also, B-2s can fly round-trip from the mainland US for certain missions (I believe they were used in such a manner in the Kosovo campaign).
But I doubt that even Donald Rumsfeld would be dumb enough to light that powder keg at the moment. Besides, if they were to do so for domestic political reasons, they'd try to do something like get congressional authorization to use force against Iran as a means of dividing congressional democrats.