Although little noticed, the Trump administration just took a significant step toward strengthened military options for possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.

It did so via Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ordering of the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to relocate from the East China Sea to the Middle East. Hegseth also extended the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman strike group, operating off Yemen in the Gulf of Aden. A third carrier strike group, the USS Nimitz, is in the Pacific Ocean but could be in the Middle East within three to four weeks of orders. Also noteworthy, a number of B-2 bombers have been deployed from their home base in western Missouri to the United Kingdom’s Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean. Those B-2s would be the linchpin of any strikes against Iran’s most heavily defended nuclear facilities.