Donald Trump has said the US has an “armada” heading toward Iran as he renewed warnings to Tehran against killing protesters or restarting its nuclear programme.
“We have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case … I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after speaking to world leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
At another point, he said: “We have an armada … heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it.”
According to reports, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers will arrive in the Middle East in the coming days.
One US official told the Reuters news agency that additional air-defence systems were also being eyed for the Middle East, which could be used to guard against any Iranian strike on US bases in the region.
The warships started moving from the Asia-Pacific last week as tensions between Iran and the United States soared following a severe crackdown on protests across Iran in recent months.
Protests began late last year as modest demonstrations in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic hardship and quickly spread nationwide.
The US-based HRANA rights group said it has so far verified 4,519 unrest-linked deaths, including 4,251 protesters, and has 9,049 additional deaths under review.
Trump had repeatedly threatened to intervene, but protests dwindled last week.
The president backed away from his toughest rhetoric last week, claiming he had stopped executions of prisoners.
On Thursday he repeated his claim, saying Iran canceled nearly 840 hangings after his threats.
“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 your Iran nuclear (programme) look like peanuts,'” Trump said.
“At an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place, they cancelled it,” he said, calling it “a good sign.”
The US military staged a major buildup last year ahead of its June strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme.
Trump has said the US would act again if Tehran resumed its atomic programme.
“If they try to do it again, they have to go to another area. We’ll hit them there too, just as easily,” he said on Thursday.
With agencies
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