🇺🇸🇮🇷 Iraq is sliding into the wider war, and a retired U.S. Officer says the U.S. has almost no useful military options left.
Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar told Brandon Weichert that recent explosions at Popular Mobilization Forces sites in Baghdad and reported UAV strikes near Erbil are signs Iraq is being pulled in.
With U.S. conventional forces largely gone, a security vacuum now pits Iranian-backed PMF elements, Kurdish factions, Turkish interests, and residual U.S./CIA presence against each other. Aguilar sees real risk of a new Sunni-Shia-Kurdish civil war in the coming weeks or months.
On the Strait of Hormuz, he argues Iran’s physical grip is solid. More U.S. airstrikes won’t loosen it. The MOAB (GBU-43) is an airburst weapon dropped from a cargo plane, not a penetrator. The remaining Massive Ordnance Penetrators (GBU-57) can only reach ~200 feet; Pickaxe Mountain sits under hundreds of meters of granite. Both are “a lot of show, a lot of boom” that won’t change the military or political dynamic.
He sees Washington running out of conventional levers and possibly setting the stage for a limited “Midnight Hammer light” strike followed by claims of success that don’t hold. That, in his view, could become pretense for considering a tactical nuclear option… even though he doubts even a B61 would meaningfully defeat the deepest sites or end the war.
On the naval side, the blockade moving farther south (toward Pakistani waters) could be an attempt to avoid an Iran-Yemen engagement box. It could also be positioning Marine Expeditionary and amphibious assets for a limited landing into Baluchistan, the same southern approach once contemplated when the U.S. held Afghanistan.
Aguilar says every major off-ramp has been closed or ignored. Both sides are interpreting each other through media and social posts rather than direct talks.
Without most of the world realizing it, ESCALATION is already UNDERWAY... and MORE IS COMING in the weeks ahead. Where it happens and how, that's TBD...
@WeTheBrandon
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