Trump is forced to escalate Middle East war deployment; conflict window may extend to 100 days

BlockBeats News, March 5 — The U.S. State Department is increasing resources to evacuate American citizens stranded in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is urgently adding military personnel responsible for intelligence gathering for military operations. These measures indicate that the Trump administration clearly was not fully prepared for a larger-scale war in advance. The U.S. Central Command is requesting the Pentagon to send more military intelligence personnel to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days, potentially extending into September, far beyond the initial four-week timeline envisioned by Trump.

As the United States and Israel may continue to extend the conflict, the likelihood of other countries directly engaging in offensive strikes against Iran is decreasing. Iran has been severely weakened, with drone and missile attacks abroad significantly lower than at the start of the conflict. Meanwhile, the UK, France, and Germany are cautiously restrained in their responses to Iran. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak explicitly stated that British aircraft could participate in regional defensive intercepts but would not engage in offensive actions. France has deployed the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean but emphasizes it is a defensive deployment. Germany’s strong anti-war sentiment, combined with constitutional restrictions on overseas offensive deployments, makes direct involvement the least likely.

According to PolyBeats monitoring, the probability of “countries directly attacking Iran before March 31” on the prediction market Polymarket continues to decline. The probabilities of the UK, France, and Germany participating are 16%, 16%, and 7%, respectively. For Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which were heavily affected by the US-Iran conflict, the probabilities of involvement have also dropped to 33% and 35%.