Iran readying more than 100 cruise missiles and drones for deadly Israeli strike, US intelligence officials reveal, as Pentagon moves aircraft carrier into Red Sea amid fears of full-scale war

Iran has reportedly readied over 100 cruise missiles as part of its ‘imminent’ attack on Israel as the US moves more forces into the Middle East amid fears that an attack could spark a full-scale war.

Officials briefed on the matter said both ABC News and CNN that the US has observed Iran readying over 100 cruise missiles, indicating that they could be ready to attack.

ABC also reported that a large number of drones that could be used in an attack on Israel have also been readied by the nation.

On Friday, the Pentagon said the United States would increase its presence in the region and that the USS Dwight Eisenhower would be sent into the Red Sea in a warning to Tehran.

Iran has publicly threatened to hit back at Israel over an attack in Syria last week that Tehran says was an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation in the wake of the Damascus attack, for which Tel-Aviv has yet to claim responsibility.

U.S. defense officials said Friday they are moving “additional assets to the area,” hours after the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem closed its staff.

The USS Dwight Eisenhower would be able to intercept missiles and drones launched by Iran.

President Biden said on Friday that he expected Iran to attack Israel ‘sooner rather than later’ and that his message to Tehran was ‘don’t.’

‘We are dedicated to defending Israel. We will support Israel and help defend Israel, and Iran will not succeed,” Biden said.

Asked how imminent an attack on Israel might be, Biden said he didn’t want to get into classified information, but “my expectation is sooner rather than later.”

Former President Trump called Biden ‘pretty pathetic’ and claimed that if he had been in office Iran would not attack Israel.

Trump said: ‘For the president of our country to actually issue a warning that he thinks we’re going to be attacked or they’re going to be attacked. It’s quite pathetic’.

“They wouldn’t attack Israel if I were president, I can tell you that,” he continued. “And they never did.”

Israel was widely blamed for an April 1 attack that destroyed Iran’s consulate building in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, including the two generals.

The attack leveled a five-story building next to the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

General Mohammad Reza Zahedi was one of those who died in the attack, having held a number of commands in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday that Israel ‘must be punished and will be punished’, days after one of his advisers said Israeli embassies are ‘no longer safe’.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz quickly responded on social media X that ‘if Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran’.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to respond with force to any attack by Iran, leaving tensions in the Middle East on a knife edge.

Defense officials said Friday they are moving “additional assets to the area,” hours after the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem closed its staff.

The USS Dwight Eisenhower would be able to intercept missiles and drones launched by Iran.

The White House on Friday would not go so far as to say an attack was ‘imminent’, instead calling the threat ‘viable’.

“We still consider the potential threat from Iran here to be real, viable, certainly credible, and we’re watching it as closely as we can,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

Kirby added that the US was in ‘constant communication with our Israeli counterparts to ensure that they can defend themselves against this type of attack.’

He added that “forced changes in posture” had been made to ensure the US is “properly prepared” for any Iranian attack, but declined to elaborate.

The NSC spokesman gave no details on the potential timing of such an attack, amid warnings that it could happen within the next 48 hours.

“I really don’t want to get into armchair quarterbacking in a public way in terms of the conversations we’re having or what we’re seeing on the intelligence picture,” Kirby said.

On Thursday, the US Embassy in Jerusalem did not explicitly mention Iran, but issued a warning to government employees.

“Out of an abundance of caution, U.S. government employees and their family members are restricted from personal travel outside of the greater Tel Aviv, … Jerusalem and Be’er Sheva areas until further notice,” the security alert read.

Iran enjoys a major advantage in terms of sheer manpower, boasting a collective active and reserve military of around 1.2 million troops, as well as thousands upon thousands of artillery systems.

Israel, meanwhile, has around 750,000 active duty and military personnel at its disposal – but hundreds of thousands of these are already engaged in operations in and around Gaza, while others maintain a presence in the north to fend off cross-border attacks by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Although outnumbered, Israel is by no means outnumbered – the IDF boasts more than 3,000 tanks in its ranks, roughly double the number believed to be in service in Iran.

This is what the Washington Post writes on Thursday that senior Pentagon officials were frustrated that the US did not get a heads up from Israel before conducting an airstrike on the Iranian site.

Three unnamed U.S. officials told the paper that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other senior defense officials believed Israel should have informed the Pentagon ahead of the strike because of the strike’s implications for U.S. soldiers in the region.

Had the United States gotten a heads up, the Pentagon would have been able to increase defense capabilities to withstand Iranian retaliation, the sources said.

If Israel and Iran engage in a full-scale war, the consequences could be devastating.

Professor Gerald Steinberg, an expert in conflict management and founder of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, said a potential war between Iran and Israel would be both futile and destructive.

“They are on the verge of a confrontation similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 between Washington and Moscow. Both countries can do massive damage to the other, but neither can “win,” he said.