Donald Trump has said it will be clear within “probably 10 days” whether a nuclear deal with Iran can be reached, as the US military buildup in the Middle East intensifies with a second carrier strike group heading to the region.
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington DC, the US president insisted Iran could not have a nuclear weapon and warned that “bad things will happen” if Tehran continued “to threaten regional stability”. His comments came as the White House waits for Iran to respond after talks in Geneva on Tuesday between US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Iranian officials.
Iran has promised to respond within two weeks to US demands that it abandon uranium enrichment in return for sanctions relief, a timeline roughly consistent with Trump’s mooted 10-day window. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, carrying F-35 Lightning IIs and F/A-18 Super Hornets, has been stationed in the Arabian Sea for nearly a month. A second group, led by the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, was last confirmed in the Atlantic west of Morocco and is expected to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar towards the eastern Mediterranean.
Experts say the combined strike groups could generate “several hundred strike sorties a day for a few weeks, an intensity greater than during the 12-day war” with Iran last June, according to Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. Six E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, critical for real-time command and control, have also been deployed to Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia.
The buildup gives Trump the option of launching a wide-ranging bombing campaign, potentially targeting nuclear sites such as the Pickaxe Mountain complex near Natanz and Taleghan 2 at Parchin, which were not hit in the 12-day conflict. Iran is believed to hold 440kg of 60% enriched uranium, theoretically enough to make ten nuclear weapons if further enriched and weaponised, though experts concluded in November that Iran does not appear able to enrich uranium in any significant manner after the war.
