Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have agreed to a request for a renewed deployment of US forces to deter Iran, the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on Saturday.
According to the report, the deployment comes as part of the cooperation agreement between Washington and the Arab Gulf states, and will take place both at sea and on land. A Saudi source told the newspaper that “the agreement was aimed at deterring Iran from a military escalation, including attacking American targets... and not with the aim of entering into a war with it.”
Iran videotaped a US aircraft carrier on its way to the Gulf, saying that although the Pentagon claims that it can attack thousands of targets, in a real situation it will not be the case. They claimed that the Iranians have been trained in this kind of fighting and use thousands of speedboats called Panthel, capable of launching a large number of mortars towards targets, and serving as a firewall for radar and warships.
The leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani, met with leaders of Shi’ite militias in Baghdad and ordered them to “prepare for war by proxy,” The Guardian reported Thursday evening. Two intelligence sources told the newspaper that Soleimani had summoned the Iranian-backed militias about three weeks ago in light of tension in the region. The move aroused concern in the US that there was a threat to American targets in the Middle East.
The United States has increased its forces in the Middle East, including aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers and Patriot missiles, in response to intelligence information that the Iranian regime had ordered its proxies to attack American forces in the region.