With the Trump administration’s military build-up in the Gulf growing stronger by the day, Iran is coming under unprecedented pressure to reach a new deal with Washington on its controversial nuclear programme.
With two heavily-armed aircraft carrier battle groups already deployed to the region, the US has added to its firepower by deploying 11 F-22 stealth fighter jets to Israel, along with state-of-the-art air defence systems. The aim of these latest deployments is to provide Israel with sufficient defensive cover in the event of Iran launching missile attacks against it in retaliation for any potential US military operation.
As the largest deployment of US aircraft and warships seen in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq War continues to amass, Trump said his preferred option was to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy during his address to the nation on Tuesday night.
"My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy," Trump added. "They want to make a deal. But we haven’t heard those secret words: we will never have a nuclear weapon." In his first term as president, Trump tore up the original nuclear deal negotiated with Iran by the Obama administration in 2015.
And recently, the US president alleged Iran was developing missiles that could threaten Europe and US bases abroad, which could "soon reach the United States of America."
The sheer size of the latest American buildup has certainly led many observers to conclude that, if no new deal with Tehran is forthcoming, Trump will, at the very least, launch another series of strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
New assertion
Even though the US president said—in the aftermath of last June’s targeted US air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities—that his administration had obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities, he recently asserted that Iran has started to set up new nuclear sites.
