Naval Deployment as of 10/26: Convergence near Iran in November?

(Per open sources) from USNI:

Source: USNI, as edited by author. Arrows indicate USS Theodore Roosevelt CSG to replace George Washington CSG, augmented by USS Makin Island ARG.

Of course, who knows what is actually going where, but at least this is the public sourcing.

Of more fundamental concern, what will the Administration actually do. This CFR article outlines the options, upsides/downsides. I’ll just note that game theoretic approaches to gaming outcomes rely upon some types of rational expectations, and I’m not sure that’s the way to go; I think the Administration probably has an unrealistically optimistic view of how close the Iranian regime is to collapsing and surrendering. On the other hand, reportedly Iran’s floating oil reserves are exhausted, so maybe they would capitulate. (Yet on the other hand, Iran has foreign exchange reserves of indeterminate amounts…)

Relatively unrelated, I found this assessment of how many bunker buster bombs we have in the inventory of interest. Not that this number is directly relevant to destroying the regime, but rather destroying some key hard targets.

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