The United States has escalated military deployments to the Middle East in the run-up to a fresh round of indirect talks with Iran scheduled in Geneva on February 17. U.S. aircraft stationed in the United Kingdom, including tankers and fighters, are being repositioned closer to the region while transport planes have been forwarding equipment to bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Satellite imagery shows a dozen F-15 fighter jets at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base since January 25, and several U.S. warplanes were recently cleared into Jordanian airspace.
Washington has also pushed additional air-defence systems into the theatre and extended the rotations of several U.S. units originally slated to withdraw in coming weeks. Officials framed the movements as both a pressure tactic aimed at Tehran and contingency preparations to enable military strikes should diplomacy fail. The White House has publicly reiterated that “all options” remain on the table, while a U.S. carrier strike group already sits in the region and a second is being dispatched.
The deployments come after a preliminary round of Oman-mediated indirect talks in Muscat on February 6, where both sides left core issues unresolved. U.S. officials present the military redeployments as leverage for negotiations, signaling to Iranian leaders that diplomatic engagement is being backed by credible military consequences. Tehran, for its part, has shown little sign of yielding on what it frames as security and sovereignty red lines.
For regional states hosting U.S. assets, the surge presents both reassurance and risk. Gulf partners have been receptive to greater U.S. military presence as a deterrent to Iranian coercion, but the concentration of forces raises the prospect of miscalculation, incidents or proxy escalation that could draw local states into a wider confrontation. The logistics of the buildup — from tanker support to air-defence batteries — also underline the U.S. intent to sustain a high-tempo posture if talks falter.
Beyond the immediate theatre, the U.S. manoeuvre has wider implications for markets and global trade. Any breakdown in talks followed by kinetic action would threaten shipping in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, where a large share of the world’s oil transits, and would likely trigger rapid market and geopolitical reverberations. For diplomats and intelligence services, the current phase is therefore a tense gamble: can maximum pressure secure better negotiating terms without sliding into an unwanted military confrontation?