WASHINGTON – The risk rose Monday as the United States vowed to send amessage to Iran by deploying an aircraft carrier strike group, in a sharpescalation of President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign.
John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor who advocated attacking Iranbefore taking his position, announced late Sunday that the USS AbrahamLincoln Carrier Strike Group would sail to unspecified waters in thevicinity of Iran.
The deployment is aimed at sending “a clear and unmistakable message to theIranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those ofour allies will be met with unrelenting force,” Bolton said.
“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we arefully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”
The USS Abraham Lincoln has previously been deployed to the Gulf, includingduring the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and was the scene of president George W.Bush’s later notorious victory speech in front of a banner that read“Mission Accomplished.”
The Pentagon had already announced with little fanfare last month that theUSS Abraham Lincoln and the rest of its strike group had headed on a“regularly scheduled deployment” out of its base in Norfolk, Virginia.
But Bolton gave the deployment a new urgency as he said that it was inresponse to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings”by Iran.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters he could not elaborate onwhat those indications were, but said they were separate from a violentflare-up between Israel and Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist militantgroup that runs the Gaza Strip.
– Based on intelligence, or politics? –
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defence ofDemocracies, which advocates a hard line on Iran, said he had heard of a“spike” in intelligence in recent days about planned attacks.
He believed Iran had given the green-light to the missiles out of Gaza byHamas as allied movement Islamic Jihad.
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The strikes sought “to tie down Israeli forces and create a crisis todistract the US and Israel from IRGC plans elsewhere,” he said, referringto Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
Other observers were much more skeptical, believing that Bolton had seizedon a routine deployment as a way to pile pressure on Iran.
The statement came almost a year to the date after Trump pulled the UnitedStates out of a multinational accord under which Tehran drastically scaledback its sensitive nuclear work.
“I think this is manufactured by Bolton to try to justify theadministration’s very harsh policy toward Iran despite the fact that Iranhas been complying with the nuclear deal,” said Barbara Slavin, thedirector of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council thinktank.
“Given Bolton’s record,” she said, “I wouldn’t put it past him to try tomanufacture a crisis here.”
UN inspectors say that Iran has been in compliance with the nuclear deal,which is still backed by European powers as well as Trump’s Democraticrivals seeking to unseat him next year.
But Iranians have voiced frustration that they have not seen a promisedeconomic boon, with Trump instead slapping sweeping sanctions on thecountry.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has hit even harder, moving toban all countries from buying Iran’s oil, its top export, and declaring theRevolutionary Guards to be a terrorist group — the first such designationof a unit of a foreign government.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate inside the clericalregime, may announce “retaliatory measures” on Wednesday on the anniversaryof the US pullout, the semi-official ISNA news agency said. -APP/AFP
