Trump says no plans for Mideast deployment

US president Donald Trump said today he is not planning to deploy an additional contingent of ground troops to the Middle East to confront Iran — but left open the possibility that he could.

Trump pushed back against a report in the New York Times about the possible deployment of 120,000 troops to the Middle East. "Would I do that? Absolutely," Trump said. "But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we are not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we would send a hell of a lot more troops than that."

The Pentagon declined to comment.

The administration in recent weeks has combined vague warnings of increased threats from Tehran and tougher sanctions with assurances that it is not seeking to go to war with Iran. The statements and subsequent reports of incidents against oil tankers and infrastructure in the Mideast Gulf have added volatility to oil futures markets at the start of the week.

The rhetoric has also elicited pushback from Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who are asking the administration to explain why it believes an escalation of threats from Iran is imminent, warning of a potential slide into military conflict.

"It is extremely alarming," Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) said today. "The secretary of state and the secretary of defense need to come to the Foreign Relations Committee or the entire Congress in a classified briefing to give us a sense of what are the reasons for any potential escalation and what are you doing to de-escalate the potential conflict."

The White House last week announced the deployment of a US carrier group and a bomber task force to the Middle East as a means to confront an unspecified threat from Iran. The US Maritime Administration issued an advisory warning of an increased possibility since early May that Iran and proxies in the region could take action against US and partner interests, including oil infrastructure.

But administration officials never have detailed the threat or explained their reasons for believing why the security situation would deteriorate.

"If we have a president who abruptly decided to withdraw our troops from Syria on a call with the president of Turkey and is now equally abruptly planning to deploy 120,000 troops back into the region, my core question is: ‘What is our strategy,' " senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) said in a televised interview today.

"I do not think the president understands or knows whatever information exists to justify preparation of 120,000 troops. His whole view of the Middle East has been to extract forces, not add forces there," Menendez said.

US officials' warnings of potential attacks from Iran preceded the reported incident on 12 May involving attacks on oil and products tankers in UAE-controlled waters off the coast of the emirate of Fujairah and the reported drone attack on oil pumping stations at Saudi Aramco's 7mn b/d East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline.

Administration officials have not publicly blamed Iran for the attacks. The US Central Command, which oversees US military assets providing protection for critical oil shipping lanes in the Middle East, is aiding the investigation into the UAE attacks at Abu Dhabi's request.

"I do not have any information that I can share with you yet about the nature of what took place (at Fujairah)," secretary of state Mike Pompeo said today during a joint appearance with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in Sochi, Russia. "We are working diligently to get answers to what caused those ships to have the problems that they have today," Pompeo said.

"We fundamentally do not seek a war with Iran," Pompeo said, adding that "we have also made clear to the Iranians that if American interests are attacked, we will most certainly respond in an appropriate fashion."

Lavrov said he brought up the issue with Pompeo. "I hope that reason will gain the upper hand and that rumors about the ostensibly planned deployment of a 120,000 strong army — which is what we discussed with Mike today and he said it is a military matter — are baseless, because this region is so tense with different conflicts and difficult situations."

The international coalition combating Islamist group Isis in Syria and Iraq is not seeing an increased threat from Iran, the coalition's British deputy commander for strategy, major general CJ Ghika, said today.

Ghika's comments "run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from US and allies regarding Iranian backed forces in the region," the Central Command retorted. It said the coalition personnel are "at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq."