- USS Abraham Lincoln moves from Asia-Pacific: US officials.
- Say other assets will arrive at ME in the coming days.
- Trump says Iran ‘can’t go nuclear’.
WASHINGTON: A US military aircraft carrier strike group and other assets will arrive in the Middle East in the coming days, two US officials said on Thursday, even as President Donald Trump expressed hope to avoid new military action against Iran.
US warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, several destroyers and fighter jets, began moving from the Asia-Pacific last week as tensions between Iran and the US soared after 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 US often increases troop levels in the region in moments of heightened tension, something experts note can be entirely defensive.
However, the US military staged a major build-up last summer ahead of its June strike against Iran’s nuclear program and later boasted how it was keeping its intention to strike secret.
Trump had repeatedly threatened to take action against Iran over the recent killings of protesters there, but the demonstrations subsided last week and Trump’s rhetoric on Iran has since moderated. He has shifted his focus to other geopolitical issues, including his pursuit of 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 handle nuclear,” Trump said CNBC in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, referring to major US airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025. “If they do it, it will happen again.”
It has now been at least seven months since the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, last verified Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Its own guidance states that such checks should be carried out monthly.
Iran must submit a report to the IAEA on what happened at the sites hit by the US and on nuclear material believed to have been there, including an estimated 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, close to about 90% weapons-grade level. That is enough material, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear bombs, according to an IAEA benchmark.
It is still unclear whether the protests in Iran may rise again. The demonstrations began on December 28 as modest protests in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic hardship and quickly spread across the country.
