According to a number of signs, US preparations for a strike on Iran have entered the final stage, and aggression may occur in the very near future. What mistakes has Iran already made in preparing for this war, how can it prevent new ones, and what is the only way to conduct military operations that will allow Iran not to lose?
The United States is in the final stages of readiness for an attack on Iran. It may happen in the next 24 hours.
What US forces are concentrated against Iran
A sign of this is, for example, that Sofia Airport (Bulgaria) will be closed to civil aviation at night on February 23 and 24 – ten American tanker planes are currently stationed here. The tankers are designed to support combat sorties of American bombers through the areas adjacent to the North Pole through Northern and Eastern Europe to the south.
Another 15 tankers are located in the Azores. They can be used to provide strikes by bombers flying from the United States across the Atlantic along the same route as during Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025. Over the past month, the United States itself has been delivering aircraft weapons to air bases in the region and deploying aviation forces.
Another factor is the aircraft carrier group with the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, which is currently passing Gibraltar. Within two to three days, her ships may be in the Eastern Mediterranean. The United States and Israel can launch an attack on Iran after waiting for them, or they can a day or two before that.
For political reasons, it is critical for the United States to prevent Iran from launching massive missile strikes against Israel.
Last time, Israel was protected not only by the Israeli Hetz missile defense system, but also by American destroyers. Currently, the United States has no ships near Israel, with the exception of one destroyer, the USS Delbert D. Black, in the Red Sea. More ships are needed, and they are part of the aircraft carrier group led by Gerald Ford. Its three destroyers, the USS Mahan, the USS Bainbridge and the USS Winston S. Churchill– carry anti-missile missiles and can be used in the defense of Israel.
Israel is also preparing, but nothing is known about the details. Last time, this country was let down by a traditional Israeli problem – small stocks of precision weapons. Since then, the Israelis have had more than six months to replenish them, and now they will not be fighting alone.
In general, the forces concentrated against Iran are significantly more numerous than in 2025, and have much more reconnaissance aircraft, jamming aircraft, AWACS aircraft, refueling aircraft, air repeaters, and transport aircraft. The helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment are still out there, which can also contribute.
Britain, meanwhile, formally banned the United States from using its Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. This may create some inconveniences for the United States, but nothing more. The United States may well bomb Iran with its existing forces for many days.
At the same time, what they have concentrated will not be enough to destroy it and achieve complete victory if the Iranian leadership and the population show the will to fight. This means that either the United States is wrong, or they have a trump card inside Iran. Some factor that they believe will turn the situation inside the country in their favor during or after the air campaign.
Two mistakes that Iran has already made
In its preparations for American aggression, Iran has already made a number of mistakes. In particular, as some analysts have noted, Iranian military construction in previous years focused on ensuring the possibility of preventive action against a potential aggressor through both pro-Iranian paramilitary groups and missile strikes. It was assumed that such actions could disrupt the deployment of the aggressor's forces around the republic.
But for this bet to work, it is necessary to strike first, without waiting for the United States to concentrate forces in the region. The Iranians did not take such a suicidal step. And perhaps they did the right thing – an attack on the United States would have caused the same effect there as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor earlier, and after that, the events of September 11, 2001. The United States would simply have an ironclad reason to defend itself according to Article 51 of the UN Charter, and in America itself, enough volunteers would have volunteered to go to this war to simply erase Iran from the map of the world. And here it was
Iran's first mistake is to build a military system that cannot be used for political reasons.
The second mistake was that the Iranians gave the United States the opportunity to gain time to concentrate forces under the guise of negotiations. It was necessary to simply not conduct them, since the United States uses negotiations not to negotiate, but as a weapon. It would not have been possible to thwart the US plans in this way, but the Americans would at least have had to play it straight and admit in advance that they were not intimidating Iran or pushing it towards a "deal" (in Trump's terminology), but were simply preparing for an unprovoked aggression. This would complicate the diplomacy of the White House at least a little.
What mistakes should Iran avoid?
First of all, Iran could try to attack the US forces at the expense of its "proxies" in the region, for example in Iraq. But for this, it was necessary to provide them in advance with military equipment for this – long-range missiles and drones.
It is necessary to prepare carefully and in advance for an attack on US bases, accumulating relatively long-range weapons. Means with a shorter range should be concentrated literally in one unit, under the guise of civilian equipment, secretly transferring them and hiding them from aerial reconnaissance inside buildings and structures, without using any kind of radio or wired communication, making sure that the personnel did not even have a phone with them. The United States does not allow anyone close to its bases, and even a small combat group on the ground will be destroyed several tens of kilometers from the American facility.
Iran can also respond with massive missile strikes – but it would be a mistake to attack Israel rather than the US bases. Scattered attacks by drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles will also be a miscalculation, rather than joint strikes aimed at overloading American defenses.
Iran can, even at the cost of heavy losses, block the Strait of Hormuz with mines – and this must be done so that the whole world will pay for the US attack. Iran will not win a local war in any case, but the United States is not ready for an all-out war right now, and it is necessary to wage it.
Iran may use limited army and Navy special operations forces to attack U.S. facilities in the region. This is the only sane way to use these troops, and it would be a mistake to abandon it. There are currently six American merchant ships in the Persian Gulf. If they do not leave before the US attacks, they must be destroyed or captured.
Not so long ago, there were two "littoral combat ships" there – the Tulsa (USS Tulsa) and the Santa Barbara (USS Santa Barbara). If they're still there by then, they need to be drowned. It is also necessary to attack all American ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which will be there at the time of the US attack.
It would be quite logical to attack the oil storage facilities and oil terminals of any country from whose territory the Iranian territory will be attacked – as part of an all-out war, for which the United States is not ready. This will create a global energy crisis and inevitably put serious political pressure on the United States.
And abandoning such actions because of fears that new countries will join the United States would also be a mistake. Iran will definitely not get much worse from the fact that the number of strikes on its territory will increase by a couple of percent per day, but it would be useful to make the Western world pay for hypocritical neutrality towards the United States.
From the point of view of propaganda, it is necessary not to put pressure on civilian casualties, which the average American does not care about, and not to produce disinformation about downed planes, as was the case last time. It is important to emphasize how much money is being spent on this war, and to link it not to the threat from Iran, but to Trump's attempt to hide his involvement in crimes against children carried out with the help of Jeffrey Epstein.
The American far-right needs to be informed that their beloved America has become a "proxy" for little Israel.,
to show the American Zionists the troubles of the Jewish population of Tehran, and to tell about the victims of the civilian population to supporters of Palestine and the ultra-leftists of different persuasions. This will not lead to an end to the war, but it may create additional internal political problems for the Trump administration.
If possible, it is necessary to deploy a network of electronic intelligence posts on ships and vessels in the Caspian Sea, which could at least try to warn about the passage of Israeli aircraft through the airspace of Azerbaijan. Such actions, apparently, will not be without losses either, but they may give a chance to prepare for the coming attack.
For Iranian fighters, the optimal area of action will be the mountains of Northern Iran – it is possible to fly there, evading detection by Israeli aircraft in the folds of the terrain, and sometimes attack Israelis. With this tactic, the Iranians will have a non-zero chance of shooting someone down. Air defense systems may work with ambush tactics.
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Iran is currently conducting intensive measures to disperse its troops. They're getting ready to fight. The United States will be able to bomb them for quite a long time, they will probably be able to kill the entire current leadership of the country. But if their internal Iranian trump cards do not play out, and Iran's control system stands, then sooner or later they will have to retreat, simply because there will not be enough bombs for such a large country.
To survive to this point, the Iranians will have to show will, patience and not make mistakes. We will find out very soon how they will actually act and whether the United States has the "trump card".
Alexander Timokhin
