Name: US sends military assets to the Middle East as Israel-Iran conflict escalates | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T17:03:20.000Z
Duration: 6 min 39 s
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As a military strategic planner, a former planner, you don't want politicians telegraphing what your next moves are going to be.

The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.

A peacekeeping force does not exist with a ceasefire.

Hello, this is the Security Brief here on BBC News and in the programme, the conflict between Israel and Iran continues to escalate with air raid sirens blaring across cities President Donald Trump calls for residents in Tehran to evacuate.

The United States is also sending its military might to the Middle East with a second aircraft carrier on its way to the Arabian Sea along with five destroyers.

But what stage of the conflict do we find ourselves in?

That's the question and where might it all be heading?

Joining me to discuss as ever is former senior officer and assault helicopter pilot in the British military, Mikey Kay.

And as always, Mikey will deliver his brief as he would to his generals.

The big question I guess everyone is asking, where does this conflict go next?

Yeah, there's some significant developments today in terms of tracking very large movements of U.S. air assets, particularly what's called a KC-135.

This is a KC-135, it's a tanker aircraft so it's used to refuel fast jets, for example, heading onto a target.

You can see on the back or you could see on the back as it was taxiing out, there's the big boom on the back which is used to plug into the jets.

Now what's significant about this is that these aircraft are trackable and are likely refuelling U.S. strike aircraft such as the F-35 fifth generation fighter, the F-15 and possibly the F-22 Raptor which is probably one of the most advanced air defence fighters in the world which belongs to the U.S.

These won't be trackable but by deduction, the tankers are airborne.

It's likely there is forward deployment of U.S. strike aircraft being positioned into or near the Middle East.

So I'm certainly at the moment watching for movement of these fighters across locations such as RAF Lakenheath which is a U.S. base in England or Ramstein in Germany.

There's a U.S. base that I was deployed to for six months in Aviano in Italy which is about two hours north of Venice.

There's also movement of another U.S. aircraft carrier towards the region, the USS Nimitz.

The USS Nimitz was located in the South China Sea but is now tracking westwards citing operational commitments and the Nimitz will join the USS Carl Vinson that has been on So lots of American military movement.

What do you think is the U.S. strategy behind all of that?

If I was to pick two major reasons, it's for sure absolutely sending a message to Iran that the U.S. is putting massive capability into the region as a show of overwhelming force.

But the fact that they're going to have two aircraft carriers in the region as well as major land-based strike assets, aircraft, this is significant.

And I think it's a method of attempted coercion to get Iran to the negotiation table.

But you may ask how successful is that going at the moment?

Well, Iran have already pulled out of the negotiations which were approaching their fifth or sixth round I believe.

So it's a big gamble and whether it will work or not, whether it will de-escalate or not and bring people to the table I think is the big question that's up for grabs.

There's a lot of rhetoric about Israel wanting regime change in Iran.

Donald Trump may be getting America more directly involved with those bunker-busting bombs that you mentioned.

We often talk on this programme about courses of action.

That's a military strategic planning term for options that are worked out by military teams that build out what a potential course of action could be.

A most likely course of action or a most dangerous course of action.

These could range from cutting the head off a snake, for example, going directly after the Ayatollah.

Trump, for example, posted on Truth Social.

He said we know exactly where the so-called supreme leader is hiding.

We are not going to take him out, brackets, kill.

That's a message in terms of what one of the potential courses of action might be.

But then you spoke about regime change, right?

That's a bigger operation to try to affect regime change.

And having had direct experience in Iraq over this, this is a very dangerous strategy that has proved catastrophic in the past.

Know the operation very well right from its inception in 2003 all the way up to flying operations over Baghdad in 2008.

If you take out a regime like they did with Saddam, you take out the security apparatus.

And if that security apparatus isn't filled with a military force or a police force, you then get a security vacuum, which is exactly what we saw.

The consequence of this in Iraq was al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Sukawi's terrorist outfit, they were allowed to thrive.

They then morphed into Islamic State in Iraq, which then morphed into Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

And the whole thing, the whole security vacuum just was a complete disaster.

You then have Iranian-backed militias, the popular mobilisation forces.

So the big thing for me is Iran is around four times the size of Iraq.

And you pursue a strategy of regime change, and there's rhetoric coming out of the US on it already, you create a way bigger problem than you ever did in Iraq.

And I think we really need to look at history and how well that went in order to sit up and really, really focus on whether you want to do this, because I would absolutely advise no.