Loading ...The USS Tripoli has been ordered to the Gulf in support of Epic Fury.
US defense official confirms to Fox News that the Pentagon is sending the USS Tripoli, a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to Mideast. The Tripoli is stationed out of Japan and would take about 2 weeks to get to the Mideast. Accompanying the ARG and the MEU are approx. 2500 US Marines.
First reported by
@laraseligman
@WSJ
This thread is going to lay out some interesting details.
The Tripoli was ordered to be built in 2012.
It was commissioned in 2020.
However there were specific upgrades ordered during Trump’s first term
FOLLOW THE THREAD HERE ( FROM THE EXCELLENT X ACCOUNT “THE RECONING ” BY SETH J LEVY
NOTE : CLICK TO ENLARGE EACH OF THE 4 BOXES TO SEE GROC REPLIES STARTING TOP LEFT AND GOING COUNTER CLOCKWISE
LOOKS LIKE THE GRAND PLAN HAS BEEN IN THE WORKS SINCE TRUMP 1.0
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Israel’s success in 12 day war gave Trump the confidence to go all in ?
Yes. But I think it goes deeper than that. If you take a look back to the first term, this entire thing is a coherent strategy for a single campaign to destroy a regional power at the apex of their powers. As the IRGC probably was in 2017.
The first years are spent putting Iran in the aforementioned economic vice grip, slowly draining them.
When the chokehold finally started to cut off oxygen, Trump launches the attack to kill Soleimani.
Parallel to all of this, Trump is tasking Kushner with the relentless pursuit of strengthening relationships between the Israelis and the Gulf Arabs. As well as between the US and the Gulf Arabs.
Iran had won negotiations in the past by stalling out the clock, making an American POTUS feel pressured into a subpar deal just so they felt like they did something to curb the IRGC’s nuclear ambitions.
Trump turned that strategy around on them, using his own negotiations as a front while he prepared for war in the backdrop.
Between 2020 and 2024, Israel assumes almost full command of the mission.
After October 7th, Netanyahu had the political capital he needed to obliterate all of the terrorist proxies that Iran used as an irregular standing army.
When Trump returns, he first tried to settle Russia and Ukraine.
His hope was to turn Russia against Iran diplomatically, forcing Iran to negotiate in earnest.
Russia rebuffed the US at every turn, as is their wont.
With that option off the table, Trump goes back to Plan A.
The 60 day clock to make a deal is started.
Once Iran doesn’t live up to those 60 days, the 12 Day War erupts.
The 12 Day War was to clear the skies for Midnight Hammer, but it was also an intelligence gathering operation. They wanted to see what Iran’s air defenses looked like.
Compared to Israel’s air forces? It looked like nothing.
After Midnight Hammer, Trump hoped that the IRGC might see that further defiance is a true hazard to their health.
They didn’t.
So Trump went to work making the US public mostly okay with Operation: Epic Fury.
He pretended to still be negotiating to make a point of how hard he’s trying, even though he knew that time had long since passed.
He picked that time to make a spectacle of kidnapping Maduro and taking control of Venezuela’s oil supply to show that regime change was both feasible and rewarding.
Helping his case was the domestic uprising in Iran. When Trump championed the cause of protecting or avenging the protesters to the best of his ability, it provided a humanitarian reason to do what he was already going to do.
Once the political capital was amassed, Epic Fury was launched.
It’s been a joint campaign between Trump and Israel that has gone on since 2017, and the enemy has attempted to fight back.
I believe a lot of the Israel handwringing and the resurrection of Epstein’s ghost had a lot to do with an attempt to divide the players in this joint operation.
But it failed.
And the end result is going to be a new Iran with economic ties to both Israel and the United States.
Seems clear that Trump has been strategizing for a very long time how he would capture Kharg Island and end the Islamic Republic’s grip on Iran, going back to at least 1988 (When he gave the quote in the attached picture and through 2017 when he spoke in front of the CIA.
https://x.com/sethjlevy/status/2032516317866029535