Iran

Together, the carrier strike groups could generate “several hundred strike sorties a day for a few weeks, an intensity greater than during the 12-days war” said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute...“The question, however, is: what is all this buildup for?” Savill said. The sizeable deployment of air and sea assets suggests the US military is giving Trump the option of launching a wide-ranging bombing campaign, beyond an effort that might focus on Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other senior figures.

They could do potentially hundreds of sorties a day because they’ll have several hundred aircraft across the Middle East,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute..."This is still nowhere near the level of firepower that we had for the First Gulf War or the invasion of Iraq, nowhere near in terms of volume,” Savill said...“People shouldn’t assume that THAAD, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are an impenetrable shield,” said Savill, referring to American and Israeli air defences. “It all comes back to, what is the US trying to achieve? Does it believe it’s delivering a sharp blow to compel the regime to accede to its demands elsewhere? Or does it think the regime is brittle enough that there is a regime-change opportunity here? If it is a regime-change operation, that increases the prospects of the Iranians just deciding to fire everything.”

Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said the US had built an impressive amount of firepower, already more than most countries could assemble. He said: “Israel could nearly double what is available in the air if it joined, and it’s worth recognising that the current force will be more precise than its predecessors, with greater air superiority.” He added that, even without Israel, once the second carrier arrived, the force would be capable of executing hundreds of air sorties per day for weeks, and delivering a high rate of Tomahawk missile strikes. Mr Savill added: “It is unknown what impact this will have. It could coerce a change of policy by the regime, and strike across its missile programs. But we don’t know if it can force the regime out of power because we have no good external understanding of how brittle it is.”