WASHINGTON — Abe will keep Iran honest!
President Trump said he’s got an “armada” was sailing toward Iran — and he meant the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.
On Thursday, the commander-in-chief told reporters that “maybe we won’t have to use” the carrier strike group but that the US had “a lot of ships” going in Iran’s direction “just in case.”
At least 132,000 tons of US Navy hardware is steaming toward the Middle East — including the nuclear-powered “Abe” and three guided-missile destroyers.
The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is hauling five squadrons of strike fighters, with a max capacity of 90 aircraft.
These include F/A-18 Super Hornets, F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters and EA-18G Growler radar jammers — along with Osprey tilt-rotor transports and MH-60S Seahawk helicopters.
Tehran’s crackdown on anti-regime protesters has resulted in up to 20,000 Iranian demonstrators being killed, according to a United Nations human rights expert.
Leaked images showing the bodies of hundreds of victims of the crackdown emerged after Trump’s threat to send “help” if the Islamic Republic continued to brutalize its populace.
Iranians have taken to the streets to protest the mullahs’ iron-fisted rule and harsh economic conditions.
“We have a big force going toward Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely. I stopped 837 hangings on Thursday,” Trump added.
“They would have been dead. Everyone would have been hung. This is like from 1,000 years ago.”
“I said, ‘If you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit. It’ll make what we did to you around nuclear look like peanuts,’” he continued.
“And an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place, they canceled it, and they actually said they canceled it. They didn’t postpone it. They canceled it. So that was a good sign. But we have an armada. We have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it. We’ll see.”
The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group includes the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., USS Michael Murphy and USS Spruance that serve as escorts. A carrier strike group can also include a stealthy nuclear-powered submarine — but their whereabouts are almost never publicly revealed.
The group is moving in the direction of the Persian Gulf, according to a Pentagon spokesperson, who declined to cite specifics to protect its operational security.
The American ships passed through the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia on Jan. 18 after departing the West Coast, USNI News first reported.
The USS George H.W. Bush — the lead ship of a similar aircraft carrier group – is also now bound for Europe to conduct training and “live-fire exercises” after casting off from Virginia’s Naval Station Norfolk last week, a post on the ship’s official Facebook page revealed.
The buildup in US naval power in and near the Middle East comes after the US moved its carriers out of the region for the first time since before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel.
The US had also moved a huge force to the Caribbean ahead of the Delta Force raid that captured and deposed Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and his wife.
During Trump’s remarks Thursday, he also called for the deposing Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and declared Thursday that a 25% tariff will soon be slapped on any nations doing business with Iran — including China and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran’s supreme leader was responsible for “the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before,” the president noted, adding he was still open to negotiations with the embattled regime.
“Iran does want to talk, and we’ll talk,” Trump told attendees at a ceremony during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
