- USS Abraham Lincoln moves from Asia-Pacific: US officials.
- Say that other assets will arrive in ME in the coming days.
- Trump says Iran “can’t do nuclear.”
WASHINGTON: A strike group of U.S. military aircraft carriers and other assets will arrive in the Middle East region in the coming days, two U.S. officials said Thursday, even as President Donald Trump expressed hopes of avoiding further military action against Iran.
American warships, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, several destroyers and fighter jets, began moving out of 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.
One of the officials said additional air defense systems were also being considered for the Middle East. The United States often increases troop levels in the region at times of heightened tension, which experts say can be entirely defensive in nature.
However, the U.S. military conducted a major ramp-up last summer ahead of its June strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, and later boasted about how it kept its intention to strike secret.
Trump had repeatedly threatened to intervene against Iran over recent killings of protesters there, but protests subsided last week and Trump’s rhetoric on Iran has since eased. He has shifted his attention to other geopolitical issues, including his search for Greenland.
On Wednesday, Trump said he hoped there would be no further US military action in Iran, but said the US would act if Tehran resumed its nuclear program.
“They can’t do nuclear,” Trump said. CNBC in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, referring to major US airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025. “If they do it, it will happen again.”
It has been at least seven months since the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, last checked Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Their own guidance says that such checks should be carried out monthly.
Iran must submit a report to the IAEA on what happened at the sites attacked by the United States and on the nuclear material believed to have been there, including about 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity, close to the level of approximately 90% weapons grade. This is enough material, if further enriched, for 10 nuclear bombs, according to IAEA criteria.
It is not yet clear whether protests in Iran could flare up again. The demonstrations began on December 28 as modest protests in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic difficulties and quickly spread throughout the country.
