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Three U.S. aircraft carriers and their accompanying warships are now sailing in the waters of the Middle East.
This gives President Trump additional warships to enforce his blockade of Iranian ports and more firepower should he decide to resume strikes on Iran.
The USS George H.W. Bush arrived in the Indian Ocean after traveling around the southern tip of Africa to reach the Middle East, according to U.S. Central Command. The carrier and several guided-missile destroyers that travel with it will bolster U.S. efforts to crack down on Iran-linked ships. The USS Abraham Lincoln and Gerald R. Ford were already operating in the region.
Elsewhere, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Friday that the Iranian regime has a “historic chance to make a serious deal” and that the U.S. military’s blockade is “going global.”
"Our blockade is only growing and going global. And as the president said, we have all the time in the world. Iran has a historic chance to make a serious deal, and the ball is in their court,” Hegseth said. “Either way, the War Department stands ready for what comes next. Locked and loaded."
"Just this week, we seized two Iranian dark fleet ships in the Indo-Pacific region that had left Iranian ports before the blockade went into effect,” Hegseth said earlier. “They thought they'd made it out just in time -- they did not. We seized their sanctioned ships and we will seize more.”