AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

President Trump is continuing to threaten to attack Iran as the U.S. expands its massive military presence in the Middle East. On Thursday, Trump said he would give Iran 10 to 15 days to reach a new nuclear deal.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region. And they must make a deal. Or if that doesn’t happen, I maybe can understand. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. But bad things will happen if it doesn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: The Pentagon has amassed an immense strike force of aircraft and warships in the largest military buildup in the region since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Earlier this week, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar on its way to join the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf. The USS Gerald Ford had been stationed in the Caribbean when the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.

Trump’s threats to attack Iran came during the inaugural meeting of the so-called Board of Peace, Trump’s new initiative to create an alternative to the U.N. On Tuesday, U.S. and Iranian negotiators held indirect talks in Geneva and left without a clear resolution. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes.

To talk about all of this and more, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News. His latest piece, “'This Is Not a Dress Rehearsal': U.S. Engaged in Massive Military Buildup as Threat to Bomb Iran Grows.”

Jeremy, lay out your findings.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Amy, what I’ve been hearing from sources is that Donald Trump has been running around for some time saying that he wants to be known as the American president that forever ended the Islamic Revolution in Iran. And he’s even, I’m told by sources, been saying that he wants to complete this before the midterm elections.

And so, part of what we’ve seen is that Trump, who ripped up the original nuclear agreement with Iran that was signed in 2015 under President Obama — is that he has used the veneer of engaging in negotiations with Iran as cover to launch more strikes. That was the case last June when the United States and Israel waged a 12-day massive bombing campaign that killed more than 1,000 Iranians.

Now we’re in the process of Trump saying — I was told a couple of days ago that Trump had made clear to the Iranians that they had two weeks to come back with what amounted to a pretty sweeping capitulation to his demands. The Iranian foreign minister this morning said that the U.S. has not formally demanded zero enrichment. But what I understand is that the Iranians have been told that the issue of their ballistic missile supply and reducing it dramatically has to be on the table and also their support for regional resistance movements.

Remember, Iran is the only actual nation-state — with the exception of Ansar Allah, the Houthis in Yemen — that has launched any sort of attacks against Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza. The Israelis have been empowered by both President Biden, when he was in office, and Donald Trump to wage these sweeping wars across the Middle East.

And so, what we’re looking at right now is the Trump strategy is either we force them into capitulation and we make a deal, that is entirely on Trump’s terms, or — and if they make that kind of a deal that would eliminate a large capacity of the ballistic missile system, the Iranians basically don’t have any deterrence anymore. And so, I’m told that part of Trump’s calculation is, look, if we get them to do that, they don’t really have a state anyway anymore, and their days are numbered, because it would make them much more susceptible to Israeli attack, not to mention American attack. But if the Iranians say that their red lines are essentially their self-defense, which is their ballistic missile and drone program, then the United States is poised to attack.

There’s two potential scenarios here. One could be that we see some form of initial limited-scale attack that the United States may think would, quote-unquote, “soften” the Iranians, and if they don’t come back with capitulation, then you wage a much wider war. I’m told by sources who are in direct contact with military planners and others that in the bigger picture, the U.S. is looking at two possible scenarios. One would be the Libya scenario, where you have U.S. airpower that is used to enact regime change, and then you allow chaos and civil war to brew on the ground. Or you have something that they’re comparing to a Venezuela scenario. It doesn’t mean that they would try to kidnap Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, or senior Iranian officials. It means that they would try to decapitate the leadership and then make some sort of a deal with lower echelons within the Iranian state akin to what’s happening now in Venezuela, where you have American oil companies coming in and the Venezuelan authorities doing essentially whatever Marco Rubio and Donald Trump order them to do.

At the same time, I’ve been told by military experts who spent decades working in the Pentagon that there is a spirit of delusion that has just taken hold in the administration, that a lot of the decisions being made now are not tactical decisions. They have to do with politics and Donald Trump’s ego and wanting to be known as the man who forever smashed the Islamic Revolution.

So, there’s no doubt about it: The U.S. is on the verge of some form of military action. It remains possible that the Iranians are going to try to thread the needle. The foreign minister and others say that they’re working on a draft to come back to what the U.S. demanded in Geneva and in Oman before that. But it’s a very dire situation.

And if the U.S. does launch a larger-scale attack, I’m told that probably what they would try to do is a blitzkrieg to knock out as much of Iran’s offensive military capability as possible alongside its air defenses, hit command-and-control centers, try to blow up naval assets. And then the question becomes: What kind of response can the Iranians offer? In the past, they’ve calibrated their strikes. They’ve intentionally not tried to kill large numbers of American troops. They showed a capacity to defeat Iron Dome in Israel. Their hypersonic missiles certainly are advanced, and they’re very strong. They do have an ability at this moment to do significant damage to Israel if they want to and also to attack oil infrastructure, potentially close the Strait of Hormuz.

But all of that sort of assumes that the Iranian missile capability is not severely damaged in an opening massive U.S. strike, and that’s very big wild card here. The Iranians said they’re not going to calibrate anymore. They’re not good to do backdoor choreography if the U.S. attacks. They view it as an existential war for the Islamic Revolution and the existence of the independence of Iran’s state.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, you talked about political reasons that could be why President Trump is ramping up against Iran right now. I mean, could that have to do, interestingly enough, with Epstein? You have the former prince who’s been arrested. Trump cannot, no matter how hard he tries, get this off the front pages of the newspapers in the United States, even though co-conspirators and he himself are not being gone after by the Justice Department, according to the attorney general. But Britain is doing it. That no matter what he does, this is extremely threatening.

And so, what we saw over the New Year’s is President Trump moving that USS Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft carrier, next to Venezuela. This was when the headlines were dominated in December by Epstein. And he attacks and abducts the Venezuelan president. Now he brings the same aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to join the USS Abraham Lincoln. I mean, the cost of maintaining this armada near Iran, are you scared that this is what is driving him?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, also, on that issue of the Gerald Ford, I mean, this is a crew that has been in a heavy rotation. Normally, there would need to be maintenance on that aircraft carrier. There would need to be troop rotation. And to send them to the region is a very clear indication that the U.S. has on the table a very serious intent to strike Iran. When I saw that the Gerald Ford was getting moved from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere and looked at some of the troop rotation and maintenance issues, that’s a very ominous sign.

But to your broader point about Epstein, you know, the Iranians have started referring to themselves as being at war with the Epstein regime, you know, the kind of coalition of nations that are amassing alongside Trump right now in their posture in the world, and with Donald Trump himself being one of the main suspects in this entire thing. Certainly, the “wag the dog” scenario is an element here. You know, Donald Trump is at great exposure because of the Epstein files, no matter how many lies he wants to tell or how often he tries to distract from it. That certainly is a factor here.

But I wouldn’t underestimate the degree to which you have elements of this administration right now — it’s very different in several core ways from Trump 1. You have elements here who are absolutely obsessed with Iran and destroying the Islamic Revolution. That is not something to be understated. And Trump, I’m told, is walking around constantly bringing up that he wants to forever be the president that changed these regimes in the world. I mean, you can talk about Cuba in a different program, but that’s the vibe right now. It’s like the resurrection of the Dulles in the early stages of the CIA worldview that the United States is just going to be toppling regimes around the world.

So, while I think the Epstein part of it is a convenient element for what Trump is doing, I think they’re dead set on trying to change the Iranian regime or force them into a capitulation that would forever weaken the existence of Iran as an independent state.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, didn’t President Obama work a nuclear deal with Iran that President Trump pulled out of?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. You know, Amy, what’s incredible, too, is that Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, War Secretary Hegseth all said after the June strikes that they had completely and totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. Let’s remember, though, that beginning in late 2003, according to even current U.S. intelligence assessments, Iran had ended its nuclear weapons program. There was a fatwa issued by the supreme leader decades ago that said that it was forbidden to use or possess weapons of mass destruction.

Now, you can say, “Oh, that’s just propaganda. That’s just lies.” But the reality is, if you talk to Iranians — I recently met with a former senior Iranian diplomat who helped to negotiate that 2015 deal, and he said that what the U.S. is doing right now is actually helping the camp within Iran that says it was a grave mistake that we ended that program. So, there’s that element to it.

But I think what we’re looking at right now is that you have this kind of neocon ideology that despite all of Trump’s rhetoric about hating the neocons and saying the Iraq War was a catastrophic mistake, Trump seems dead set on sort of legacy work here and regime change in Iran.

And the question here, Amy, is if the United States does attack, and if it’s true what the Iranians are saying, that they’re not going to calibrate strikes anymore — you know, I was told by one well-connected Iranian that he’s heard talk of wanting to kill at least 500 American service members in retaliatory strikes. Donald Trump has never had to endure a mass casualty incident as president, of American soldiers or American personnel. And the question then becomes: What does Trump do if the Iranians are able to successfully strike military bases or other areas where there are large numbers of Americans? There’s tens of thousands of Americans positioned in the Gulf right now. This is a very, very dangerous scenario that we’re facing right now.