Unusually specific intelligence reports about Iranian threats to US forces in the Middle East triggered a request by the military for additional assistance as a deterrent against possible aggression, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
That threat prompted the Trump administration to deploy the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier and its strike group, along with several bombers, to bolster forces in the region.
US officials said the intelligence, which emerged late last week, indicated Iran planned to target US forces in Iraq and Syria, to orchestrate attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb strait near Yemen through local proxies and possibly carry out attacks in the Persian Gulf with armed drones.
cting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan said he approved the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln group to waters near Iran in response to “indications of a credible threat by Iranian regime forces”.
“We call on the Iranian regime to cease all provocation. We will hold the Iranian regime accountable for any attack on US forces or interests,” Mr Shanahan tweeted.
US National Security Adviser John Bolton said the move was “a clear and unmistakeable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on US interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force”.
“The US is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council spokesman, Keyvan Khosravi, dismissed Mr Bolton’s statement, calling it a “clumsy use of an out-of-date event for psychological warfare”.
News site Axios said Mr Bolton’s warning came after Israel, which has pushed to isolate Iran, passed on intelligence about a possible plot by Tehran “against a US target in the Gulf or US allies like Saudi Arabia or the UAE”.
Read the article in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal, AFP).