The commander of U.S. Central Command told Congress on Tuesday that the United States is prepared to respond militarily against Iran if nuclear negotiations were to fail.
Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael Kurilla briefed lawmakers on U.S. military force posture in the Middle East.
“President Trump has made it clear that if Iran doesn’t permanently give up its nuclear enrichment, military force by the United States may be necessary,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the committee chair.
“If the president directed, is CENTCOM prepared to respond with overwhelming force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran?” the congressman asked the general.
“I have provided the secretary of defense and the president a wide range of options,” Kurilla said.
“I think that is a ‘Yes?’” Rogers asked.
“Yes,” Kurilla said.
Kurilla, who has led the U.S. Middle East command since 2022 and is expected to retire this summer, told committee members about the impact that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, in December, has had on the region.
“The fall of Assad basically severed the Shia crescent,” Kurilla said. “Qassem Soleimani, he was killed back in 2020. He wanted to have a Shia crescent that ran from Iran to Iraq, Syria to Lebanon.”
“The fall of Assad severed that,” he said. “That is probably the single biggest event that has happened in the Middle East.”
In May, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Syria’s new president, Ahmed Sharaa, and said he was looking at normalizing relations with the new government. Kurilla told committee members that there was a high “upside” and “very low” downside to those discussions.
Kurilla also described how Iran’s main proxy in the region, Hezbollah, has been deeply diminished by Israeli strikes, including the killing or wounding of thousands of terrorists in September using explosive beepers and walkie-talkies.
“Hezbollah acted as a sort of Sword of Damocles over the top of Israel,” Kurilla said. “Israel’s—the doctrinal term is ‘disintegration’—of Lebanese Hezbollah should be studied by every military. It was brilliant.”
The United States and Israel have been less successful in deterring and defeating Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group, which continues to attack Israel with explosive drones and threaten shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.
Kurilla said that part of the problem in defeating the Houthis is that they receive some 80% of their supplies from Iranian smuggling vessels hidden among the region’s vast informal shipping network.
“The hardest part is to find that ship,” Kurilla said. “At any given time, there are between 3,000 and 5,000 dhows between Iran and the Bab el-Mandeb. That’s the same distance from the tip of Florida to Boston that you’re trying to find those dhows.”
In May, the United States and the Houthis brokered an agreement for the U.S. military to halt strikes on Yemen in exchange for a ceasefire on American ships.
Kurilla said that since that agreement was signed, U.S. naval forces have been able to transit the Red Sea without incident.
“November 2024 was the last time a destroyer went through the Bab el-Mandeb. It was attacked 17 times with anti-ship ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles and UAVs,” he said, adding that four destroyers passed through the strait safely in the past week.
Lawmakers also questioned another of the witnesses, Katherine Thompson, the acting U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, about past comments from Michael DiMino, the Pentagon’s chief Middle East policy adviser.
DiMino has long raised doubts about the U.S. alliance with Israel and the American presence in the Middle East.
“Mr. DiMino has said deeply concerning things, including that the Middle East does ‘not really matter for U.S. interests,’ that ‘vital or existential threats in the Middle East’ are ‘best characterized as minimal to non-existent,’” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) said.
“He’s also specifically characterized Iran’s missile attacks on Israel as ‘fairly moderate,’” Ryan said.
The New York Democrat asked how the United States can negotiate with Iran when Pentagon officials have made statements undercutting the Trump administration’s positions.
“We support the president’s objective to not only, first and foremost, defend the State of Israel, but second, of course, deny Iran the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Thompson said. “That is something we’re 100% committed to.” JNS

{Matzav.com}