Updates with Trump's comments
President Donald Trump's administration is moving more US naval and air force resources to the region near Iran, despite assurances that diplomacy with Tehran remains his preferred outcome.
The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier strike group has moved from the Caribbean to just west of Gibraltar and will be in a position to reach the western Mediterranean by the weekend, based on a fleet tracking analysis by think tank US Naval Institute.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group has been in the Arabian Sea since late January. The Pentagon over the past few days has moved multiple air refueling and airborne communications aircraft from bases in the US to Europe, according to open source intelligence provider OSINTDefender.
The Trump administration has argued positioning additional US military assets near Iran is necessary to pressure Tehran to make unspecified concessions in future diplomatic engagements with the US.
"It's proven to be, over the years, not easy to make a meaningful deal with Iran," Trump said on Thursday. "We have to make a meaningful deal, otherwise bad things will happen." Trump was speaking at a meeting of his recently launched Board of Peace, at the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, DC.
"Maybe we're going to make a deal — you're going to be finding out over the next, probably, 10 days," Trump said.
Trump frequently sets deadlines that have no relevance to the timeline of his planned actions. He said on 12 February that he aimed to wrap up talks with Iran and make a decision on whether a nuclear deal is possible "over the next month, something like that."
The US military buildup is required to protect against a possible attack from Iran, according to US secretary of state Marco Rubio. That statement suggests that the administration — as it did in the January military operation in Venezuela — sees no need to inform the US Congress or ask its approval for a possible military action against Tehran.
Vice president JD Vance weighed in after the latest US-Iran talks on 17 February, saying that Iran is not willing to "work through" red lines set by the US on its nuclear program.
