Navy strike group deployed to send ‘message’ to Iran

Source: Politico | May 5, 2019 | Quint Forgey

John Bolton said the maneuver is meant as a warning to Tehran.

The U.S. military is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Central Command region in the Middle East to send a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran, national security adviser John Bolton said in a statement Sunday.

The action, confirmed by the Defense Department, comes “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings,” Bolton said, and is intended to convey “to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

Bolton added: “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.”

President Donald Trump abandoned the multinational Iran nuclear deal in May of last year, and the Trump administration is expected to impose even more economic sanctions on Tehran in the coming days. Trump and others in the administration have consistently spoken harshly about Iran.

Trump last month flouted warnings from Pentagon officials in naming Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who controls the elite military force, called the designation a “vicious move” and a “mistake.”

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