Iran has said it is prepared to respond to a ground invasion of U.S. forces, accusing the administration on Sunday of talking out both sides of its mouth on seeking negotiations while also preparing for a land assault.
While foreign ministers of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt were set to meet to discuss ways to halt a month-long war in Iran, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the U.S. was secretly planning to expand into a ground war.
“As long as the Americans seek Iran’s surrender, our response is that we will never accept humiliation,” he said.
Washington’s first two contingents of Marines, numbered in the thousands, arrived to the Middle East on Friday aboard an amphibious assault ship. U.S. officials have been quoted as saying the Pentagon was preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, possibly involving raids by Special Operations and conventional infantry troops.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Russian forces took satellite images three times of the U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia before it attacked the site.
Zelensky said his daily intelligence briefing indicates that Russian satellites captured photos of the air base, which hosts U.S. and Saudi troops, on March 20, 23 and 25.
“We know that if they make images once, they are preparing. If they make images a second time, it’s like a simulation. The third time it means that in one or two days, they will attack,” he later added, speaking from his experience in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Iran’s attack on the Saudi base damaged multiple U.S. refueling aircraft and several unmanned aerial vehicles were hit.
Although U.S. Central Command has declined to comment, reports also reveal that a pivotal U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged.
“The loss of this E-3 is incredibly problematic, given how crucial these battle managers are to everything from airspace deconfliction, aircraft deconfliction, targeting, and providing other lethal effects that the entire force needs for the battle space,” said Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and director of studies and research at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.