Patrick Shanahan, the acting US defense secretary, said he approved thedeployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to unspecifiedwaters in the vicinity of Iran in response to "indications of a crediblethreat by Iranian regime forces."
"We call on the Iranian regime to cease all provocation. We will hold theIranian regime accountable for any attack on US forces or our interests,"Shanahan tweeted.
The announcement came first on Sunday evening from John Bolton, Trump'snational security advisor, who said the move was "a clear and unmistakablemessage to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or onthose of our allies will be met with unrelenting force."
"The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we arefully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces," Bolton said.
US officials did not give more details on the alleged threat, and thePentagon had already announced in April that the USS Abraham Lincoln hadheaded on a "regularly scheduled deployment" out of its base in Norfolk,Virginia.
Iran's supreme national security council spokesman Keyvan Khosravidismissed Bolton's statement, calling it a "clumsy use of an out-of-date eventfor psychological warfare."
Based on intelligence, or politics?
The news site Axios said Bolton's warning came after Israel, which haspushed to isolate Iran, passed along intelligence on a possible plot by Tehran"against a US target in the Gulf or US allies like Saudi Arabia or the UAE."
Quoting an unnamed Israeli official, Axios said the intelligence was "notvery specific at this stage" but that the "Iranian temperature is on the rise"due to pressure.
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense ofDemocracies, which advocates a hard line on Iran, said he had heard of a"spike" in intelligence in recent days about planned attacks.
He believed Iran had given the green-light to Islamist movements Hamas andIslamic Jihad to fire missiles into Israel in a weekend flare-up to "create acrisis to distract the US and Israel" from plots elsewhere.
Other observers were much more skeptical of the intentions of Bolton, whohas advocated attacking Iran and enjoyed close ties to the country's formerlyarmed opposition before Trump hired him.
The Trump administration's team of saber-rattling foreign policy advisorsare all but openly shouting their desire for an unauthorized andunconstitutional war with Iran," said Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat.
"Congress must act immediately to stop this reckless march to war beforeit's too late," he tweeted.
The deployment announcement came almost a year to the day after Trumppulled the United States out of a multinational accord under which Tehrandrastically scaled back its sensitive nuclear work.
"I think this is manufactured by Bolton to try to justify theadministration's very harsh policy toward Iran despite the fact that Iran hasbeen complying with the nuclear deal," said Barbara Slavin, the director ofthe Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council think tank.
Iran Frustration Mounting
With frustration mounting in Iran over the lack of dividends from thenuclear accord, the semi-official ISNA news agency said that President HassanRouhani would announce "retaliatory measures" on Wednesday to mark theanniversary of the US pullout.
The news agency said that Rouhani would invoke sections of the accord underwhich Iran can cease some or all of its commitments if other parties fail toadhere to their part, notably on ending sanctions.
The Trump administration instead has imposed sweeping sanctions on Tehranand in recent weeks has hit even harder, moving to ban all countries frombuying Iran's oil, its top export, and declaring the Revolutionary Guards tobe a terrorist groupthe first such designation of a unit of a foreigngovernment.
UN inspectors say that Iran has remained in compliance with the nucleardeal, which is still backed by European powers as well as Democrats seeking tounseat Trump next year.
Britain, France and Germany have set up a special payments system to letEuropean businesses operate in Iran and avoid US sanctions, although few firmshave been willing to incur Washington's wrath.
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