The Jerusalem Post:

Yaakov Katz, editor-in-chief

WHAT is the ultimate goal? For Israel, one of the key elements missing from the international community’s campaign to stop Iran has always been the presentation of a credible military threat. While Israel repeatedly beat the war drums over the years and even came close to attacking in 2010 and 2012, the same cannot be said about the United States.

After refusing to attack Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007, George W. Bush made it clear that he would not take action against Iran, and Barack Obama was vocally opposed to military force from the get-go of his term, which ended in the disastrous nuclear pact.

Israel has always believed that in the absence of a credible threat, the Iranians will not back down from their continued pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which almost all intelligence agencies across the globe agree is the true objective of Iran’s nuclear program.

A military threat, though, will not work on its own, and needs to be combined with tough economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation. This is where the new military maneuvers the US has been holding in the Persian Gulf come into play.

In recent weeks, two US aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating in the region: the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS John C. Stennis. The gathering of those naval assets at the same time that Washington announced new sanctions against Iran seemed more than just coincidence. It also came on the heels of the US Air Force’s deployment of its fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, the first time the aircraft has been sent to the Middle East.

Does this mean that the US is planning action against Iran? Of course not. It could be that the deployment of so many strategic platforms in the Middle East is actually meant to send a message to Russia – as it pertains to its presence in Syria – more than it is to Iran.

EITHER WAY though, it shows the Iranians that the United States is engaged in the region, not just through economic sanctions but also by deploying strategic military assets nearby.

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