Trump sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East in effort to increase pressure on Iran | Iran
Donald Trump ordered the world’s largest aircraft carrier to sail from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East in order to increase pressure on Iran while discussions on stopping Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs continue.
It will take approximately three weeks for USS Gerald R Ford and its supporting warships to return to the region, where they will join USS Abraham Lincoln, significantly increasing the military firepower available to the US leader.
On Tuesday, Trump said in an interview with Axios that he was “considering” sending a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, but that at this point he believed Tehran was willing to make a nuclear deal.
The United States and Iran held a round of indirect talks in Oman last week, and further talks were expected to continue, but no date has been set so far.
Reports began circulating in the US media on Thursday that Ford was the nominated carrier to hit the road, a day after Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington to discuss the new talks with Iran.
Iran has expressed willingness to halt its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief but has rejected other demands. Israel wants Iran to limit its ballistic missile program and cut its support for Hezbollah and other proxy groups.
Trump’s rhetoric on Iran has changed significantly in the past month. At first, he claimed he wanted to intervene by telling people protesting the country’s regime that “help is coming.” However, the United States had very few military assets at the time.
This changed with the arrival of the Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group, but by then the Iranian regime had largely regained control of the streets, killing thousands of people (possibly tens of thousands) in the most brutal crackdown in the country’s recent history.
Meanwhile, the US President’s focus appeared to have shifted to reining in Iran’s nuclear program; That program was set back by a summer bombing campaign by Israeli and U.S. air forces during last summer’s 12-day war.
The Ford aircraft carrier strike group was dispatched from the Eastern Mediterranean in late October and arrived in the Caribbean Sea in mid-November as Trump increased pressure on Venezuela’s former president, Nicolás Maduro.
He played a central role in the extraordinary capture of Maduro by US forces in early January and remained in the Caribbean. But sending the carrier and allied warships back to the Middle East makes for an unusually long deployment: It left the United States in June 2025 and has no clear return date.
Trump on Thursday warned Iran that failure to reach a deal with his administration would be “very traumatic” and said he hoped talks would be concluded quickly.
“I think there will be something like this next month,” Trump said in response to a question about the timeline for reaching an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. “This has to happen quickly. They have to agree very quickly.”
Then, during a visit to Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina on Friday, Trump said a change of government in Iran would be “the best thing that could happen.”
“They have been talking, talking, talking for 47 years. Meanwhile, while they were talking, we lost many lives,” he told reporters.
