A US aircraft carrier and several warships have arrived in the Middle East amid fears that Donald Trump could finally order a strike on Iran.
The president warned last week that an “armada” was on its way, saying his administration was “watching” Iran following weeks of deadly protests across the country.
The USS Abraham Lincoln and a number of guided-missile destroyers have now arrived in the Middle East region, which comes under the US military’s Central Command, US officials said on Monday.
“We have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case … I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely,” Mr Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Thursday. “We have an armada … heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it.”
The US military said it would carry out an exercise to “demonstrate the ability to deploy, disperse, and sustain combat airpower” in the Middle East, the latest indication of an increasingly aggressive foreign policy stance adopted by the Trump administration in the president’s second term.
Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran in response to the regime’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators during the widespread protests in recent weeks.
However, despite reports of a large number of casualties resulting from the crackdown, the US president has yet to take military action.
As many as 30,000 Iranians may have been killed in the unrest so far this month, two senior officials in Tehran’s health ministry told Time magazine on Sunday, though estimates of the number of deaths have varied wildly.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is continuing to investigate another 17,031.
The demonstrations have abated following the crackdown. Mr Trump said he had been told that the killings were subsiding, and that there were no plans to execute any prisoners despite reports that a protester was due to be put to death earlier this month.
There is precedent for US military forces surging into the Middle East, sometimes claiming that the move was in fact defensive. Last year, there was a significant buildup of US military presence ahead of strikes carried out in June against Tehran’s nuclear programme.
The current movement of military forces into the Middle East includes fighter jets and air-defence systems, alongside the aircraft carrier and warships.
But a senior Iranian official has warned that any attack on Iran would be considered an act of “all-out war” against the regime.
The United Arab Emirates has also made clear that it has no desire to be involved, declaring on Monday that it would not let its airspace, territory or waters be used for any hostile military actions against Iran.
The al-Dhafra airbase, a US military hub located south of the capital of Abu Dhabi, has been a critical US Air Force hub, supporting key missions against Isis along with reconnaissance deployments across the region.
