Washington: A “massive armada” of US warships now in the Middle East is ready to strike Iran, President Donald Trump says, as he issued his most direct threat to date for the Islamic Republic to negotiate or face American military action.
A strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was redirected to the region from the Indo-Pacific this month and entered the Middle East at the start of this week. It was reportedly tracked to the coast of Oman on Tuesday, within 1000 kilometres of Iran.
Trump said the fleet was larger than the one sent to Venezuela late last year ahead of US forces capturing the country’s then leader, Nicolás Maduro.
“It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm and purpose. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfil its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!”
Trump reiterated that Tehran had failed to heed his warnings last year, resulting in US forces bombing several Iranian nuclear facilities – an attack believed to have severely degraded the regime’s nuclear capability, though not permanently.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on X that a “limited strike” by the US was illusory, and any military action, from any source and at any level, would be regarded as a declaration of war.
“The response to it will be immediate, comprehensive and unprecedented, targeting the aggressor, the heart of [Israeli’s largest city] Tel Aviv and everyone who supports the aggressor,” he said on X, according to automatic translation by the platform.
The Associated Press reported that Tehran had reached out to other Middle Eastern nations on Thursday, following Trump’s renewed threat. Two countries, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have signalled they won’t allow their airspace to be used for any attack.
The Trump administration has maintained that lines of communication to the regime are open for a “deal”. Trump oscillated on the idea of military strikes at the height of anti-regime protests this month – he encouraged demonstrators to keep at it and promised help was “on its way”, but backtracked after being told planned executions of protesters had been stopped.
The US president also threatened to impose tariffs of 25 per cent on any country still doing business with Iran, but those were never implemented.
Trump’s backdown on those strikes was at least partly informed by conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who urged him to delay, and pressure from US partners in the region, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
While the Islamic theocracy has brutally suppressed many of the protests in Tehran and other cities, the death toll has continued to climb, according to activist groups and sources relied on by western news outlets amid a government-imposed internet blackout in Iran.
Human Rights Activists in Iran, a non-government charity based in the US, says at least 6221 people had been killed and more than 42,000 arrested over 31 days of national protests. Other estimates are much higher.
Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday (Washington time), US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the death toll was “in the thousands for certain”.
Rubio said the Iranian government was probably weaker than ever, and its economy was collapsing, predicting protests would spark up again in the future.
With Reuters
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
