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Moving aircraft like the B-1 to RAF Fairford provides the option to scale up the air campaign rapidly should the U.S. administration decide to do so,” Christoph Bergs, an airpower researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, told Stars and Stripes in an email Saturday. However, because Britain has limited the use of its bases to defensive operations, the number of sorties flown from the U.K. may remain modest unless that policy changes, Bergs said. For now, they will likely focus on Iranian long-range missile forces, he added.

”[The UK is] involved,” says Matthew Savill of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a military think tank. “There’s already been a drone strike on Cyprus, and UK personnel are at the site in Manama, Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet was hit. So the question is actually, ‘To what extent do we wish to get more involved? Do we wish to play a largely defensive role, or do we want to join in?’”

A “friendly takeover” could resemble Venezuela in the aftermath of Maduro’s removal, “where you still have an authoritarian regime in power but moving in the direction and at the speed that the US determines,” said Carlos Solar, senior research fellow, Latin American Security at RUSI, a London-based defense think tank. Solar told CNBC by email that Cuba had lost support from Venezuela and Iran “at a moment of maximum pressure” from the Trump administration. But he added: “What is unclear is how the US will make the Cuban regime break, forcing Havana to capitulate.” “We are not seeing the kind of military buildup prelude to operation Absolute Resolve that eventually led to Maduro being captured in January. It could well be that the US approaches Cuba in a totally different way,” Solar said.