Who is really calling the shots here: U.S. Adm. Brad Cooper, left, or IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir?
Emanual Fabian – The Times of Israel – Jan 24, 2026
Commander of the United States Central Command Adm. Brad Cooper was in Israel on Saturday for meetings with senior officials, The Times of Israel learned, as US President Donald Trump indicated he was maintaining the possibility of strikes on Iran amid its crackdown on protests.
Cooper met with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder and Operations Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Itzik Cohen also participated in a meeting with the military chiefs.
The IDF has been on high alert and has carried out preparations in recent weeks after Trump threatened military action against Iran.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were also in Israel on Saturday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mainly to discuss Gaza, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters.
Trump has threatened military action if Iran carried out mass executions of prisoners or killed peaceful demonstrators, but he recently backed away, claiming Iran halted the hangings of 800 detained protesters. He has not elaborated on the source of the claim, which Iran’s top prosecutor called “completely false.”
However, Trump appears to be keeping his options open, saying Thursday aboard Air Force One that his threatened military action would make last year’s US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites “look like peanuts” if the government proceeded with planned executions of some protesters.
He added that the United States had an “armada” heading toward Iran, including an aircraft carrier group and its thousands of troops, but hoped he would not have to use it.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three accompanying destroyers left the South China Sea and began heading west earlier this week, a US Navy official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military movements, said Friday that the Lincoln strike group was in the Indian Ocean.
An official source quoted by Fox News said the strike group had yet to enter CENTCOM’s sphere of command and is not expected to be within striking distance of Iran for several more days or even a week.
When they arrive in the region, those warships would join three littoral combat ships, which were in port in Bahrain on Friday, as well as two other US Navy destroyers, which were at sea in the Persian Gulf.
The arrival of the carrier strike group would bring roughly 5,700 additional service members. The US has several bases in the Middle East, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts thousands of American troops and is the forward headquarters for US Central Command.
Central Command said on social media that the Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle now has a presence in the Mideast, noting the fighter jet “enhances combat readiness and promotes regional security and stability.”
Similarly, the UK Ministry of Defense said Thursday that it deployed its Typhoon fighter jets to Qatar “in a defensive capacity.”
Analysts of flight-tracking data have noticed dozens of US military cargo planes also heading to the region.
The activity is similar to last year when the US moved in air defense hardware, like a Patriot missile system, in anticipation of an Iranian counterattack following the bombing of three key nuclear sites in June during the Israel-Iran war. Iran launched over a dozen missiles at Al Udeid Air Base days after the strikes.
‘Everything on high alert in Iran’
Ahead of the arrival of the US aircraft carrier strike group and other military assets to the Middle East in the coming days, a senior Iranian official said Friday that Iran will treat any attack “as an all-out war against us.”
“This military buildup — we hope it is not intended for real confrontation — but our military is ready for the worst-case scenario. This is why everything is on high alert in Iran,” said the senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“This time we will treat any attack — limited, unlimited, surgical, kinetic, whatever they call it — as an all-out war against us, and we will respond in the hardest way possible to settle this,” the official said.
“If the Americans violate Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, we will respond,” added the Iranian official. He declined to specify what an Iranian response might look like.
“A country under constant military threat from the United States has no option but to ensure that everything at its disposal can be used to push back and, if possible, restore balance against anyone who dares to attack Iran,” the official said.
Also Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan claimed there were signs that Israel was still seeking an opportunity to attack Iran, warning such a move could further destabilize the region.
“I hope they find a different path, but the reality is that Israel, in particular, is looking for an opportunity to strike Iran,” Fidan said in a televised interview.
Yankees checking in with their overlords ha ha ha. It’s pathetic.
US and Zion’s plan was to release the urban-terrorists and create as much mayhem and damage as possible in the shortest time and make the chaos last for months, then they would have external separatist groups launch further directed terror attacks to capture western Iranian cities which would make many western Iranian missile and air-defense sites vulnerable. They also wanted to wreck havoc on food supplies to create artificial localized famine to push people out of the cities They employed ISIS tactics, brutally and savagely killing people and security forces to create fear so the rest would flee! After all ISIS has some world records in Syria and Iraq such as 100 savage terrorists butchers with heads on pikes arrive and the entire city flee even though they could have easily resisted had they some cojones; they wanted this to happen in Iranian cities, some cops were beheaded, burned alive, dismembered, faces smashed, etc… to be able to do such savagery they had to take drugs, of course this would easily make them accessible to Zionist Djinns and there were evidence of Jewish/Satanic rituals performed in some streets. They were ordered to kill, if not the cops then anyone passing by and if not even kill a few of your own (ring leaders killing their own pawns). These terrorists had Elon musk’s Starlink and could communicate with their masters after Iran would cut off the Internet. They also had a woman trained for some kind of leadership of the riots, because Reza Pahlavi the ugly son of the former Shah or as we call him Sos-Khersi (سس خرسی) could not act as a permanent head of the Frankenstein monster consisting of all the various evil and ideologically different anti Islamic Republic’s opposition groups. So what happened?
Iranian hacker groups and Intelligence had tracked that woman and captured her as she entered Iran! Internet was cut and before jamming and rendering all Starlink receivers blind, Iran managed to track those receivers leading to some key arrests that helped limited the chaos to only two days! Bamboozled Elon shipped a large batch of updated Starlinks but Iranian security just captured them on the way as they knew all about it! Furthermore Iranian security forces and indeed majority of Iranians did not flee, in fact they came to the streets in the second night to defend the mosques and also in the following days they came out in massive numbers, while the material damage was significant and also ~2400 people including security were martyred some ~690 terrorists were also neutralized. There were many more wounded and many more arrests and there will be many executions indeed! The numbers that Zionist Mass Media is reporting is very unrealistic. In fact keep in mind US wins modern wars with Psi-Ops, numbers or actual field variables matter much less, US can win through mass-media even after having scored nothing much on the field and the winner can end up with a sense of loss even when in truth they have not lost! This is part of the modern hybrid war. Most people have no willpower and are usually on automatic behavior, herd instinct kicks in and at worst Djinns have them on the leash; there is no freewill and that’s for another time.
Now they are amassing forces in Jordan with help of Syria under Jolani and the backstabbing Turkey, US is now ditching the SDF (قسد) which are the Syrian Kurds who have always been pawns of US. This final force is to attack Iraq and the pave the way for a land attack on Iran. Of course Iran too is going to meet them outside Iran and ultimately take it to the Mediterranean beach once bulk of the the next air-force and ballistic missile show (Op True Promise 4) is over! US capital ships will sink too for sure this time, defeat of US by Iran equals cementing multipolar world order and perhaps the end of wars, that’s why Russia and specially China is supporting Iran (China can just pay Iran for the dirty work really) as the collective Zionist world-order is supporting Zion. Just think about once US is humiliated and defeated, Taiwan would just beg for forgiveness from China and European countries would just rush to make peace with Russia and all the traitor countries in the middle east will come to Iran for their new roles! The entire Muslim world will recognize Iran as the country that saved Sunni Gaza and of course we believe Khamenei himself will hand over the flag to the promised Mahdi (عج). We can only hope in between there will be no nuclear war as that would be the most costly victory, victory itself is divinely assured. I have also explained in logical terms what most people can’t understand and that is the fact that Nukes are overrated! You need to get rid if the Hollywood mentality that there is a single godly powerful weapon that wins everything. This Ramadan could be a special Ramadan indeed so inshallah one last time I will post about how nukes are overrated in the next few days.
ایها صهیون نحن المقاومون و نحن المنتقمون
Big dickheads acting as muscle for little dickheads never makes sense and usually ends badly for both.
I wonder if the Admiral asked the kikes about the USS Liberty? They probably had a good laugh about that one…the rabid jews did anyway, as the Admiral was bent over a garbage can and given a penetrating demonstration of who calls the shots.
Merchants of Death
to be Hung, Drawn & Quartered