WASHINGTON – The Pentagon abruptly sent the Nimitz aircraft carrier from the Middle East and Africa home, under the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a week-long muscle-flexing strategy aimed at preventing Iran from attacking troops. diplomats in the Persian Gulf.
Officials said on Friday that interim defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the ship to be redistributed in part as a “de-escalation” signal to Tehran to avert a crisis in President Trump’s final days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its representatives may be preparing an attack as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Major General Qassim Suleimani, commander of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Senior Pentagon officials said Miller estimated that dispatching Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of the death of General Suleimani in an American drone attack in Iraq, could remove what the Iranian hardline sees as a provocation that justifies its threats. against American military targets. Some analysts said Nimitz’s return to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., Was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.
“If Nimitz is leaving, it may be because the Pentagon believes that the threat could ease somewhat,” said Michael P. Mulroy, a former Pentagon senior political official for the Middle East.
Critics said the mix of messages was another example of inexperience and confusing decision making at the Pentagon since Trump sacked Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and several of his top advisers in November, and replaced them with Miller, a former White House counterterrorism advisor and several Trump supporters.
“This decision sends, at best, a mixed signal to Iran and narrows our range of options at precisely the wrong time,” said Matthew Spence, a former Pentagon senior official for the Middle East. “This seriously questions what the government’s strategy is here.”
Mr. Miller’s order rejected a request from General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of American forces in the Middle East, to extend the Nimitz’s positioning and keep its formidable attack aircraft wing on standby.
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran on Twitter, and in November, top national security advisers convinced the president to give up on a pre-emptive strike against an Iranian nuclear facility. It is not clear whether Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Miller’s order to send Nimitz home.
General McKenzie’s Pentagon and Central Command issued several weeks of force demonstrations to warn Tehran of the consequences of any attack. Nimitz and other warships arrived to provide air cover for American troops withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The Air Force dispatched B-52 bombers three times to fly within 60 miles of the Iranian coast. And the Navy announced for the first time in almost a decade that it had ordered a Tomahawk missile-firing submarine in the Persian Gulf.
Also on Wednesday, General McKenzie warned the Iranians and their representatives of the Shiite militia in Iraq against any attacks around the anniversary of the death of General Suleimani on January 3.
But on Thursday, senior military advisers, including General McKenzie and General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were surprised by Miller’s decision on Nimitz.
The Navy tried to limit more extensions to the aircraft carrier’s already long deployment, but commanders believed the warship would stay at least a few more days to help contain what military intelligence analysts considered a growing and imminent threat.
American intelligence analysts in recent days said they had detected air defenses, maritime forces and other Iranian security units on high alert. They also determined that Iran moved more short-range missiles and drones to Iraq. But senior Defense Department officials acknowledge that they cannot say whether Iran or its Shi’ite representatives in Iraq are preparing to attack American troops or are preparing defensive measures in the event that Trump orders a preemptive strike against them.
“What you have here is a classic security dilemma, where maneuvers on both sides can be misinterpreted and increase the risk of miscalculation,” said Brett H. McGurk, former Trump special envoy to the coalition to defeat the Islamic State.
Some key advisers to Miller, including Ezra Cohen-Watnick, one of the White House supporters recently sworn in as the Pentagon’s chief intelligence policy officer, raised doubts about the Nimitz’s deterrence value, especially when compared to the moral costs of extending your Tour. Some advisers also questioned the imminence of any attack by Iran or its representatives, an assessment previously reported by CNN.
Pentagon officials said they had sent additional ground fighters and attack jets, as well as refueling planes, to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to compensate for the loss of Nimitz’s firepower.
On Friday, the top commander of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said his country was fully prepared to respond to any American military pressure amid rising tensions between Tehran and Washington in the final days of Trump’s presidency.
“Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension about finding any powers,” said Major General Hossein Salami at a ceremony at the University of Tehran commemorating the anniversary of General Suleimani’s death.
“We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield,” said General Salami, without mentioning the United States directly.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Thursday that the Trump administration was creating a pretext for the war.
“Instead of fighting Covid in the US, @realDonaldTrump & cohorts waste billions to fly B52s and send guns to OUR region,” said Zarif in a tweet. “Iraq’s intelligence indicates conspiracy to MAKE a pretext for war. Iran does not seek war, but will OPEN and DIRECTLY defend its people, security and vital interests. “
In another provocation from Iran on Friday, Tehran notified international inspectors that it was about to start producing uranium at a significantly higher level of enrichment at Fordow, a plant that sits at the bottom of a mountain and therefore more difficult to attack. The measure seemed to have the main objective of putting pressure on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to re-join the nuclear deal with Iran. There was little activity allowed at the Fordow plant in the 2015 deal.
The notification to the Vienna International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations group that oversees the production of nuclear material, said Iran would resume production of uranium enriched with 20 percent purity. This is the highest level it produced before the nuclear deal, which the country justified at the time as necessary to make medical isotopes for its Tehran Research Reactor.
Fuel enriched at this level is not enough to produce a bomb, but it is close. It requires relatively little additional enrichment to reach the 90 percent purity that is traditionally used for pump fuel.
The change was not unexpected. Iran’s parliament recently passed legislation requiring the government to increase the amount of fuel it is producing and the level of enrichment. But the choice of making this production at Fordow, its newest installation, was revealing. The plant was built at the bottom of a mountain on a well-protected base from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and to successfully hit it would require repeated attacks with the largest bunker-destroying bomb in the American arsenal.
It would take Iran months to produce any significant amount of fuel at the 20% enrichment level, but the mere announcement could be another red flag for Trump to rekindle bombing options.
David E. Sanger contributed reports.