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One theory: the war with Iran is going far worse than expected. The nominally 'neutral' government of Iraq is about to fall without oil revenues to pay workers. In addition the US has been bombing elements of the pro-Iranian PMF militias that are the primary force in Iraq, they're stronger than the Iraqi army. To a certain extent, the US is now at war with Iraq as well.
The US is flying in a large number of troops to the Middle East in C-17s. We may be looking at a multi-year campaign to retake Iraq as a staging post for a ground invasion of Iran.
Desert Storm but much more retarded and much more costly.
At any rate the airborne troops being deployed are there to do something and it probably won't be cheap.
What are your sources for this? Not asking out of disbelief but because I want as solid information as possible before making more oil bets in the coming days.
I found one X account that showed a lot of planes flying from eastern US and across Europe but I don't know for sure if it's real info.
https://nationaltoday.com/us/tn/hunter-tn/news/2026/03/31/us-deploys-special-forces-airborne-troops-to-middle-east/
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/03/30/thousands-of-us-army-paratroopers-arrive-in-middle-east-as-buildup-intensifies/
https://www.opb.org/article/2026/03/25/pentagon-orders-thousands-of-troops-to-deploy-to-middle-east/
These are mostly paratroopers, heavy equipment will take longer to be brought in if at all, given sealift constraints. But perhaps the idea is that heavy forces won't be needed for the start of the campaign since they'll mostly be fighting Iraqis? Plus the cost-effectiveness of heavy armour has declined in recent years.
Or perhaps they're going for a more ambitious offensive to win the war quickly. IDK. Far too few to get anything serious done I think. The invasion of Ukraine required about 300K Russian troops and that clearly was not enough, so what are 80K at most Americans going to do?
Get killed, I guess? The coast there looks like a defender's dream and an attacker's nightmare. People talk about how China is going to struggle to land on Taiwan, but the US forces are likely to take heavy casualties and perhaps fail altogether here.
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Watch Trump complain just as shamelessly this year when he fails to get the Nobel Peace Prize as he did last year.
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