Trump says US still ‘watching Iran‘ as ‘massive’ fleet heads to Gulf region

Iranians were the focus of a US naval “armada,” according to Donald Trump, who is president of the United States, as a group of Americans with an aircraft carrier strike group and other assets was expected to arrive in the Middle East in the coming days.

As he flew back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, Trump declared to reporters on Air Force One, “We’re watching Iran.”

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Trump remarked, “We have a big force going toward Iran.”

He said, “We’re watching them very closely, but I prefer not to see anything happen.”

We have a lot of ships going that way, he said, and maybe we won’t need to use it. “Just in case a big flotilla goes that way,” he continued.

Trump made the announcement regarding the US naval construction after he made threats of military action against Iran last week, he said after receiving assurances that Tehran would not execute protesters.

Following US media reports last week that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group of vessels were given the order to divert from maneuvers in the South China Sea to the Middle East, Trump confirmed that the region is still under military preparation.

Trump reiterated on Thursday that his earlier threats to use force against Tehran had prevented Tehran’s top Iranian authorities from carrying out the execution of more than 800 protesters, and he once more said he was willing to speak with the country’s leadership.

Iranian officials have denied plans to execute those who participated in the widespread anti-government demonstrations that started in late December and that, according to Iranian state media, left 2,427 civilians and members of the security forces dead.

Trump stated on Wednesday that he hoped Iran would stop US military action against Iran and that the US would intervene if Tehran resumed its nuclear program.

Trump remarked to CNBC in a Davos interview that “they can’t do the nuclear.”

The president referred to US air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, when Washington joined Israel in its 12-day occupation of the nation. “If they do it, it will happen again,” the president said.

Prior to the attacks in June, Washington had previously ordered a significant military deployment in the Middle East, and officials later bragged about how Tehran’s nuclear program had been kept a secret.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned the US that if attacked, Tehran would “fir back with everything we have.” He wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The minister wrote that “our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have” when faced with renewed threat.

Araghchi said that while his warning was not a threat, “but a reality I feel I need to express explicitly because I dislike war as a diplomat and veteran.”

He predicted that an “all-out confrontation will be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to sell to the White House.”