Global Research

The U.S.-NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council alliance seems to be preparing a military confrontation with Iran.

The Israeli intelligence web site DEBKA reports (quoting Western military sources) that Obama has “secretly ordered US air, naval and marine forces to build up heavy concentrations on two strategic islands – Socotra, which is part of a Yemeni archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and the Omani island of Masirah at the southern exit of the Strait of Hormuz.”

It is said to be the “heaviest American concentration of might in the region since the US invaded Iraq in 2003” when “100,000 American troops were massed in Kuwait ahead of the invasion”.

Flying troops to the islands “almost daily” from the nearby U.S. naval base Diego Garcia, “by mid-February Washington will have some 100,000 military personnel on the spot and available for any contingency”, according to DEBKA’s sources.

The report states that at the beginning of March:

[T]hree US aircraft carriers and their strike groups plus a French carrier [will] arrive in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea: […] the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, USS Enterprise and the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

DEBKA also cites “reports of British and French air, naval and special forces landings this month in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates”.

The Saudis are also said to be deploying troops in the “oil regions in the east opposite the Persian Gulf.Global Research has been covering this military buildup as well as covert operations on the ground in Iran, topics which receive no attention from the mainstream media:

US and allied Special Forces as well as intelligence operatives are already on the ground inside Iran. US military drones are involved in spying and reconnaissance activities […] There has been a massive deployment of troops which have been dispatched to the Middle East, not to mention the redeployment of US and allied troops previously stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nine thousand US troops have been dispatched to Israel to […] test multiple Israeli and US air defense systems, especially the “Arrow” system, which the country specifically developed with help from the US to intercept Iranian missiles.

Reports also suggest a substantial increase in the number of reservists who are being deployed to the Middle East. Reports confirm that reservist US Air Force personnel have been dispatched to military bases in South West Asia (Persian Gulf). (Michel Chossudovsky, Beating the Drums of War: Provoking Iran into “Firing the First Shot”?, Global Research, January 14, 2012)

For more on the military buildup against Iran see the following Global Research I-Book Series:

The Globalization of War: The “Military Roadmap” to World War III
– by Michel Chossudovsky, Finian Cunningham – 2012-02-05

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.

Julie Lévesque contributed to this report.