US sends thousands more troops to Mideast as Trump seeks to squeeze Iran

by Dan Lamothe

The Pentagon is sending thousands of additional troops into the Middle East in the coming days, as the Trump administration attempts to pressure Iran into a deal that could end the weeks-long conflict there while considering the possibility of additional strikes or ground operations if a fragile ceasefire does not hold, U.S. officials said.

The forces moving into the region include about 6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and several warships escorting it, said current and former officials, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military movements. About 4,200 others with the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and its embarked Marine Corps task force, the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, are expected to arrive near the end of the month.

The infusion of firepower appears likely to coalesce with warships already in the Middle East just as the two-week ceasefire is set to expire April 22. The troops will join the estimated 50,000 personnel that the Pentagon has said are involved in operations countering Iran.

President Donald Trump, in a bid to squeeze Tehran economically, on Sunday announced a blockade of maritime traffic leaving and arriving at Iranian ports. He is attempting to press the Iranian regime into reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passage for the shipment of Middle Eastern oil transiting the Persian Gulf, and end its nuclear program in negotiations led by Vice President JD Vance. Talks faltered over the weekend, but the president said that they could resume later this week.

On Wednesday, Trump told Fox Business that he thought the war in Iran could be over “very soon” and he expected gas prices to fall to prewar levels by the midterms “on the assumption” that the United States is able to stop Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. “When that’s settled, gas prices are going to go down tremendously,” he said.

Iran escalated threats to choke off international trade, with military commander Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi saying Iran would block imports and exports from the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Red Sea in response to the U.S. blockade. “Iran will take powerful action to defend its national sovereignty and interests,” he said in comments reported by Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

The arrival of additional American warships will put even greater pressure on Iran and provide Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, and other senior military leaders with more options should negotiations fail, said James Foggo, a retired Navy admiral and dean at the Center for Maritime Strategy in Northern Virginia.

“The more tools you have got in your kit, the more diversity of options that you have,” Foggo said, calling the injection of additional forces “a reserve capacity, in the event that things go south.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked about the expanding military presence, said in a statement that Trump “has wisely kept all options on the table in the event that the Iranians will not forgo their nuclear ambitions and make a deal that is acceptable to the United States.” Trump, Vance and U.S. negotiators have “made the U.S. redlines very clear,” she said, predicting that Iran’s “desperation for a deal will only increase” with the blockade in effect.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the region, declined to comment.

The arrival of the additional forces will provide commanders with three aircraft carriers in the region, each with dozens of fighter jets. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been in the Middle East since January, while the USS Gerald R. Ford arrived in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in February, extending a marathon deployment that included time last year in Europe and involvement in operations off Venezuela at the beginning of this year.

The USS George H.W. Bush was close to the Cape of Good Hope, near South Africa, on Tuesday and expected to make an unusual hook around the bottom of the continent on its way to the Middle East, two officials familiar with the matter said. The path to the region was first reported by USNI News.

The three-ship Boxer Amphibious Ready Group last week departed from Hawaii and is now a couple of weeks from the Middle East, officials said. The embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit includes an infantry battalion of more than 800 personnel, plus helicopters and naval landing craft. A similar unit, the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, arrived in the Middle East from Okinawa, Japan, late in March.

A former senior defense official said that U.S. forces involved in Trump’s blockade are probably on the lookout for ships suspected of supporting Iran. Armed boarding teams from the Navy SEALs, Marine Corps or Coast Guard are trained to seize vessels, whether their crews cooperate with U.S. forces or not, the official said.

That had not occurred as of Wednesday, officials said, noting that, in the opening 48 hours of the operation, nine merchant vessels had been intercepted by U.S. forces, and all returned to Iran without incident. More than a dozen Navy warships are positioned in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea to enforce the blockade, confronting vessels as they exit the Strait of Hormuz.

Shipboarding can be an exceedingly dangerous mission, though. Any U.S. personnel who may have to do so face the risk that embarked mariners will fight back or that Iranian forces will target the boarding teams with drones or speedboats, the former senior defense official said.

Trump has appeared to acknowledge the risks to U.S. personnel participating in the blockade, warning in a social media post Monday that Iran’s navy already is “laying at the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated,” and any smaller vessels that approach U.S. personnel could face a similar fate.

“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea,” Trump wrote, referring to the Pentagon’s campaign of strikes in Latin American waters. “It is quick and brutal.”

Any ships that are seized are likely to be sent to another location to be held in quarantine, the former senior official said.

Foggo, the retired admiral, said he sees promise in the blockade, given how much Iran’s economy is underpinned by the export of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

“It’s a lot of pressure, and if it’s sustained over a period of time, it’s going to really hurt the Iranian economy,” he said. “At the same time, you have to admit, gas prices are going to continue to go up. So, that is a problem for us and our policymakers, as well, because people are not happy about it.”

As the blockade continues, military officials are planning for another potential escalation: U.S. ground operations on Iranian soil, two U.S. officials said.

Administration officials have discussed everything from launching a complex Special Operations mission to extract Iranian nuclear material, to landing Marines on coastal areas and islands to protect the strait, to seizing Kharg Island, an Iranian export facility in the Persian Gulf, officials have said.

Enforcing an extended blockade will be a “tall order” for U.S. forces, but any of those ground operations would be significantly riskier, said Mick Mulroy, a retired Marine and CIA officer who served in the Pentagon during the first Trump administration.

Mulroy said he hopes that the administration and Iran can find an agreement that is acceptable to both sides. If, for example, they can agree to a deal that pauses the Iranian nuclear program for 10 or 20 years, that must be balanced against the challenges Marines and soldiers could face while deployed on Iranian soil.

“It’s not going to be without consequences,” he said of such a mission. “There will likely be casualties.”

Tara Copp contributed to this report.

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