US ‘armada’ heading towards Iran as tensions remain high

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States has an “armada” heading towards Iran but hoped he would not have to use it, as he renewed warnings to Tehran against killing protesters or restarting its nuclear programme. US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers would arrive in the Middle East in the coming days. One official said additional air-defence systems were also being eyed for the Middle East, which could be critical to guard against any Iranian strike on US bases in the region. The deployments expand the options available to Trump, both to better defend US forces throughout the region at a moment of tension and to take any additional military action after striking Iranian nuclear sites in June. “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,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back to the United States after speaking to world leaders in Davos, Switzerland. At another point, he said: “We have an armada … heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it”. The warships started moving from the Asia-Pacific last week as tensions between Iran and the United States soared following a severe crackdown on protests across Iran in recent months. Trump had repeatedly threatened to intervene against Iran over the recent killings of protesters there but protests dwindled last week. The president backed away from his toughest rhetoric last week, claiming he had stopped executions of prisoners. He repeated that claim on Thursday, saying Iran cancelled nearly 840 hangings after his threats. “I said: ‘If you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit. It’ll make what we did to your Iran nuclear [programme] look like peanuts’,” Trump said. “At an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place, they cancelled it,” he said, calling it “a good sign”. On Friday, Iran’s top prosecutor dismissed Trump’s assertion that he stopped the execution of protesters, calling the claim “completely false”. “No such number exists, nor has the judiciary made any such decision,” Mohammad Movahedii told Mizan, the judiciary’s news agency. The US military has in the past periodically surged forces to the Middle East at times of heightened tensions, moves that were often defensive. However, the US military staged a major build-up last year ahead of its June strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme. Trump has said the United States would act if Tehran resumed its nuclear programme after the June strikes on key sites. “If they try to do it again, they have to go to another area. We’ll hit them there too, just as easily,” he said on Thursday. Iran must report to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, on what happened to sites struck by the United States and the nuclear material thought to be there. That includes an estimated 440.9kg of uranium enriched up to 60 per cent purity which, if enriched sufficiently, could be enough for 10 nuclear bombs, according to an IAEA yardstick. The agency has not verified Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium for at least seven months, which the watchdog advises should be done monthly. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in a speech on Thursday accused the United States and Israel of stoking the protests as a “cowardly revenge … for the defeat in the 12-Day War”. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander General Mohammad Pakpour warned Israel and the United States “to avoid any miscalculations, by learning from historical experiences and what they learned in the 12-day imposed war, so that they do not face a more painful and regrettable fate”. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and dear Iran have their finger on the trigger, more prepared than ever, ready to carry out the orders and measures of the supreme commander-in-chief,” he said. Pakpour’s comments came in a written statement quoted by state television marking the national day in Iran to celebrate the Guards, whose mission is to protect the 1979 Islamic Revolution from internal and external threats. It is unclear whether protests in Iran could also surge again. The protests began on December 28 as modest demonstrations in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic hardship and quickly spread nationwide. The US-based HRANA rights group said it has so far verified 4,519 unrest-linked deaths, including 4,251 protesters, and has 9,049 additional deaths under review. An Iranian official told Reuters the confirmed death toll until Sunday was more than 5,000, including 500 members of the security forces. Asked how many protesters were killed, Trump said: “Nobody knows … I mean, it’s a lot, no matter what”. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, Associated Press

US ‘armada’ heading towards Iran as tensions remain high

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships move from the Asia-Pacific even as Iran protests seem to dwindle

USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships move from the Asia-Pacific even as Iran protests seem to dwindle