The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is now in the Middle East after being redirected from its Indo-Pacific deployment as U.S. tensions with Iran continue unimpeded.
In addition to the USS Abraham Lincoln, the carrier strike group includes the Carrier Air Wing 9 and destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen, Jr., USS Spruance, and USS Michael Murphy.
“We have a lot of ships going that direction just in case,” President Donald Trump said on Air Force One last Thursday, adding that “we have an armada heading that direction and maybe we won’t have to use it.”
Trump has spoken publicly in recent weeks about the possibility of carrying out new military operations in Iran after the regime cracked down on protests earlier this month, killing thousands of civilians.
The United States is “open for business” if Iran wants to reach out, a U.S. official told reporters on Monday, adding that “they know what the terms are” for a deal, but didn’t provide specifics.
Trump said earlier this month that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” but later said that Iran’s apparent willingness to halt roughly 800 executions last week had a “big impact” on his decision not to approve military action against the country, though an Iranian official disputed that that happened last week. The crackdown and killings of thousands of people demonstrated both the regime’s ruthlessness toward its own people, but also that its grip on the country could be loosening.
Iranian officials, for their part, have warned that they would retaliate if the United States conducts a military operation against them.
On Monday, Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Reza Talaei-Nik warned Israel and the U.S. that any potential attack would “be met with a response that is more painful and more decisive than in the past,” a reference to last year’s U.S. attacks on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities and Tehran’s limited response.
Late Friday night, the Pentagon released its National Defense Strategy, which said Iranian leaders appear “intent on reconstituting its conventional forces,” and have “left open the possibility that they will try again to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
The United Arab Emirates’s foreign ministry also said on Monday it would not allow attacks on Iran to be launched from its territory.
The foreign ministry said it “has reaffirmed the United Arab Emirates’ commitment to not allowing its airspace, territory or waters to be used in any hostile military actions against Iran,” adding that “dialogue, de-escalation, adherence to international law, and respect for state sovereignty” were the best way to handle “current crises.”
The U.S. evacuated some personnel from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which is America’s largest military base in the Middle East, earlier this month due to the increased tension. It was also the target of Iran’s retaliation after the U.S. strikes last June.
It’s unclear what targets the U.S. could hit in Iran if the president approves such a mission. It’s also not clear what the president’s objective would be in the mission, unless the goal is to target the regime’s leaders. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reportedly retreated to a bunker amid concerns of a U.S. attack, according to Iran International, an opposition outlet.
PENTAGON: IRAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPON AMBITIONS REMAIN DESPITE MIDNIGHT HAMMER AIRSTRIKES
Many of Iran’s allies in the region, known as the Axis of Resistance, have been decimated by U.S. and Israeli military operations in the more than two years since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which was the event that instigated the various conflicts since then.
Should the U.S. target Iran, many of the resistance groups Tehran has funded and trained could restart their attacks. The U.S. and the Houthis engaged in a roughly two-month-long conflict that U.S. defense officials called Operation Rough Rider last year, while Iranian-backed militias targeted U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, killing three U.S. service members in January 2024.
