US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday of the deployment of a major US naval fleet in the Gulf region has threatened to escalate tensions with the Iranian regime, which promptly issued a stark warning against any “miscalculations”.
US officials confirmed that an aircraft carrier strike group – including an aircraft carrier, destroyers, frigates, and support ships – is en route to the Middle East and expected to arrive in the coming days.
The deployment includes assets such as the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been redirected from the South China Sea.
“We’re watching Iran,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday while returning from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We have a big force going towards Iran,” he said, adding, “I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely.”
“And maybe we won’t have to use it … we have a lot of ships going in that direction; just in case, we have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said, while also claiming that his threat of use of force against Iran had prevented the regime from executing more than 800 protesters.
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In response, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, General Mohammad Pakpour, on Thursday warned Washington and Israel against any “miscalculations” and urged them to “learn from past mistakes”.
“Our fingers are on the trigger, as we remain prepared for war, more ready than ever to carry out orders and measures of the supreme commander-in-chief [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei],” he said.
Referring to the 12-day war between Iran and Israel-US armies last year, Pakpour said the US should remember Iran’s actions of bombing US bases in Doha “so that they do not face a more painful and regrettable fate”.
Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that hanging protesters was “out of the question”, although he confirmed the deaths of 3,117 people in the anti-regime protests that had rocked the country these past few weeks.
Independent activists and human rights watch groups, however, peg the protester deaths at more than 5,000.
In an opinion piece published in a prominent US media outlet on Tuesday, Araghchi warned the US against attacking Tehran, saying their “powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack”. The warning, said the President, was not a threat, but a “reality”.
“As a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war… An all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House,” he added.
“It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe,” Araghchi said.
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