On his way back from Davos last weekend, Donald Trump warned the Iranian leadership of a naval force heading for the Middle East with an implied threat of military action. Since then, an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln has arrived in the Indian Ocean bordering the Arabian Sea and within the US Central Command’s area of operations.
Trump’s previous promise of US intervention in Iran if anti-government protesters were killed appears to have had little impact on the Tehran regime. Nearly 6,000 people have died and 41,800 detained, according to human rights groups, although new evidence suggests the death toll could be as high as 30,000 amid a determined cover-up by the state.
Even so, Trump’s current naval build-up seems less concerned with the mass killing of protestors than a US-led military operation to change the Tehran regime.
