US state security adviser John Bolton in Jerusalem to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 20, 2018.
Sebastian Scheiner | AFP | Getty Doubles
The United States is deploying a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East to send a readable message to Iran that any attack on U.S. interests or its allies will be met with “unrelenting force,” U.S. national security advisor John Bolton broke on Sunday.
Amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, Bolton said the decision was “in response to a many of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”
“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to react to to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or regular Iranian forces,” Bolton said in a asseveration.
It marked the latest in a series of moves by President Donald Trump’s administration against Iran in recent weeks.
Washington has put it will stop waivers for countries buying Iranian oil, in an attempt to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero. It has also blacklisted Iran’s elite Subversive Guard Corps.
The Trump administration’s efforts to impose political and economic isolation on Tehran began last year when it unilaterally canceled from the nuclear deal it and other world powers negotiated with Iran in 2015.
“The United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Shipper Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian system that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” Bolton said.
Bolton, who has take the leaded an increasingly hawkish U.S. policy on Iran, did not provide any other details.
A U.S. official said the forces “have been categorized to the region as a deterrence to what has been seen as potential preparations by Iranian forces and its proxies that may indicate imaginable attacks on U.S. forces in the region.”
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States was not expecting any imminent denounce on U.S. forces.