Washington: The US is deploying an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force in the Middle East to send a ‘clear and unmistakable’ message to Iran that any attack on American interests or its allies will be met with ‘unrelenting force’, National Security Advisor John Bolton has warned.
Bolton said Sunday the decision to deploy the ‘USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group’ and a bomber task force to the US Central Command region in the Middle East was in response to a number of ‘troubling and escalatory indications and warnings’ from Iran.
The deployment of the strike group and bomber task force comes after US President Donald Trump last month refused to give waivers to countries like India from buying oil from Iran, in an attempt to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero.
After coming to power, Trump withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal last year and has imposed stringent sanctions against what he describes as the ‘authoritarian’ Iranian regime.
“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces,” Bolton said in a statement.
The US is seeking to ramp up pressure on Iran to counter what the White House perceives to be a potential threat. Last month, the US designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’, the first time the designation has been applied to a government entity. It categorises Iran’s military alongside groups like IS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas.
The Trump administration insists that it is not seeking to topple Iran’s Islamist regime, but that it only seeks to push the government to stop supporting proxy militias and terrorist groups and otherwise change its behaviour.
Some of the administration’s critics, however, fear that its actions and rhetoric could provoke the Iranians in a manner that may lead to a military confrontation.