The Wire - March 31, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z March 31, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: STRATEGIC BOMBER BUILDUP AT DIEGO GARCIA CONTINUES, USA-IRAN RHETORIC INCREASES. CHINA DELAYS BLACKROCK DEAL TO BUY PANAMA CANAL.//

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-International Events-

Panama: The recently announced sale of Panama Canal Ports has been blocked by the Chinese government at the eleventh hour. As announced a few weeks ago, the majority of port facilities pertaining to the Panama Canal were scheduled to be sold to a consortium ultimately owned by Blackrock. This deal has been halted/delayed by China at the last minute.

AC: The general theory behind this sale was for a critical maritime asset like the Panama Canal to be under American control as announced by the White House several weeks ago. After this initial interest was expressed, the deal became not necessarily American government control over the Canal, but rather for an American company to own these port facilities. Ultimately, the Chinese government halting the deal complicates the situation somewhat, especially since the reasons for the allegedly-temporary halt are not entirely clear. In any case, this indicates that the White House is not out of the woods yet when it comes to developments in Panama.

Middle East: American rhetoric regarding a potential war with Iran has continued to escalate, with President Trump stating that "if we don't make a deal, there will be bombing". This comes on the heels of contradictory statements by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who stated on Thursday that the intelligence community "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003". Regardless of this assessment, American war plans continue.

Meanwhile, a major surge of American military logistical resources is underway throughout the region. Satellite imagery from this morning confirms the presence of at least 5x B2 Spirit bombers at the airfield on Diego Garcia, along with an assortment of the standard tanker aircraft.

AC: At least two KC-135 Stratotankers were observed moving from Guam to Diego Garcia early last week, which is a rare logistical movement and indicative of efforts to pull resources from multiple Areas of Responsibility (AORs) to provide logistical support for whatever is planned. A handful of C-17 cargo planes also landed at Diego Garcia over the weekend, adding to the sharp increase in aviation traffic at the remote island over the past week. Substantially increased C-17 cargo flights into Al Udeid Airbase have continued over the past few days as well. An additional B2 Spirit (likely intended for deployment to the Indian Ocean with the others) was located in Honolulu, possibly due to maintenance reasons.

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Analyst Comments:

When a man threatens to bomb a foreign nation, and then begins staging large numbers of strategic bombers near that nation, one might be inclined to think that man is serious.

At the risk of speculating too wildly, it's possible that the White House intends go to war with Iran in any case, regardless of any sort of agreement. This is a classic tactic in Middle East diplomacy...engage in peace talks then at the last second claim the other side violated some term of the agreement, and the war is on. Considering the extremely significant numbers of military logistics pouring into the region, this could be a possibility...offering the olive branch openly on one hand, to distract from readying the arrows with the other.

Conversely, all of this could be a giant pile of nothing. This could be an undisclosed drill, or some kind of shell game with resources, or any other number of theories that point to some innocent shuffling of bombers. This could be more of a deterrent than a legitimate preparation for a large scale military campaign. However, if it is strictly a posturing move, it's the most convincing one that's ever been undertaken in this manner.

As a reminder, 5x bombers might not sound like much, but the United States only has a grand total of 20x B2 bombers. This means that a quarter of ALL American B2's are at Diego Garcia right now. Furthermore, all indications suggest that all of these B2's flew there non-stop, flying from Missouri to the middle of the Indian Ocean without landing anywhere in between. While the B2 platform was designed to do exactly that, if this is what happened, this is still a rare occurrence that is a logistical feat out of the norm for a mere training exercise. This is also considering the B2's that we can see on satellite imagery. If this is just posturing, in all likelihood the hangars at Diego Garcia are empty, with their contents parked on the apron intentionally, for all the world to see.
On the other hand however, if this is a wartime deployment (and thus if we assess that the hangars are occupied, with the remainder parked out in the open), there could technically be as many as 9x B2's on this one island right now...almost half of America's entire fleet of long-range stealth bombers. While this is technically possible, this many B2's missing from Whiteman Air Force Base would be noticeable, so right now the most likely scenario is that the 5x B2's that we can see are intentionally parked for maximum visibility. Again, the US Air Force does not normally forward-deploy these types of assets, B2's live at Whiteman AFB and that's about it. It's so rare to see them land anywhere else that it was a huge media event when a B2 landed in Guam for a much-publicized military drill last summer, after many years of hiatus. As such, if this deployment is to send a message, it's a very expensive and risky one to send, drawing doubts as to whether this is posturing, or a legitimate prelude to a war that's already been decided.

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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