Donald Trump announced on Thursday that a "huge" American armada was sailing towards the Persian Gulf, continuing the pressure he is putting on Tehran, although the prospect of US military intervention seemed to be receding.
The US President has repeatedly threatened to order strikes on Iran in response to the bloody repression of recent mass protests in the country, but appeared to back down last week, assuring that Tehran had suspended planned executions of protesters.
"We have a lot of ships moving in that direction, just in case," he told reporters accompanying him on the plane he was flying back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"I would prefer nothing to happen, but we are monitoring the situation very closely," he added.
US media reported last week that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was in the South China Sea, was ordered to sail to the Middle East along with its strike force.
The US President's statements follow the threat by the head of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite corps of the Iranian military, that Israel and the US will have a "painful" fate if they attack the Islamic Republic and his assurance that his forces always have "the finger on the trigger."
Mobilizations that began on December 28th became widespread, turning into the largest protest movement in the country in years around January 8th, openly defying the theocratic regime, before being violently suppressed.
Iranian state television, citing the Iranian Foundation for Martyrs and War Veterans, reported on Wednesday that 3.117 people had been killed, publishing a first official count of the unrest, lower than that given by human rights organizations.
