WASHINGTON – The Pentagon said on Sunday that it had ordered the aircraft carrier Nimitz to stay in the Middle East because of Iranian threats against President Trump and other U.S. officials, just three days after he sent the warship home as a sign to accelerating increasing voltage. with Tehran.
The acting secretary of defense, Christopher C. Miller, abruptly reversed his previous order to redeploy the Nimitz, which he had done over the objections of his leading military advisers. The military has been pursuing a muscle-bending strategy for weeks aimed at deterring Iran from attacking US personnel in the Persian Gulf.
“Due to the recent threats issued by Iranian leaders against President Trump and other US government officials, I have ordered the USS Nimitz to halt its routine redeployment,” he said. Miller said in a statement Sunday night.
U.S. intelligence agencies have for months ruled that Iran wants to target senior U.S. military officers and civilian leaders to avenge the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. . drone a year ago.
But it was unclear what new urgency to these threats, if any, led Miller to cancel his earlier order to send the Nimitz home. Over the past few days, Iranian officials have stepped up their fiery messages against the United States. The head of the judiciary of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, said that everyone who played a role in the assassination of General Suleimani would not be able to ‘get rid of law and justice’, even if they were ‘ an American president.
It was unclear last week whether Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Miller to send the Nimitz to his home port of Bremerton, Wash., After a longer than usual ten-month deployment.
Some Trump administration officials on Sunday suggested that with a controversial political week – Tuesday’s Senate by-elections in Georgia and the House and Senate meeting Wednesday to mark the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. – to confirm the optics of the aircraft. carrier steaming from the Middle East does not fit the White House.
Whatever the reason, the mixed messages surrounding the carrier’s movements have raised new questions about the coordination and communication between an inexperienced Pentagon leadership and the White House in the waning days of the Trump administration.
Some current and former Pentagon officials have criticized the Pentagon’s decision-making since Mr. Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper and several of his top assistants in November, replacing them with Mr. Miller, a former assistant to White House terrorism, and several Trump loyalists.
Officials said Friday that Miller had ordered the redeployment of the Nimitz in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to prevent it from ending up in a crisis at the end of Trump’s administration that fell into the lap of Mr. Biden would end up while taking office.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump repeatedly threatens Iran on Twitter, and in November, the best national security assistants spoke to the president about a preventive strike against an Iranian nuclear site.
The Pentagon’s central order has for weeks published several violent revelations to warn Tehran about the consequences of any assault on US troops or diplomats.
The Nimitz and other warships showed up to provide air cover for US troops withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The air force sent three B-52 bombers to fly within 60 kilometers of the Iranian coast. And the navy announced for the first time in almost a decade that it had ordered a submarine with cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its allies may be preparing a strike this weekend to avenge the deaths of General Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian militia in Iraq, which was last January killed in the same drone strike in Baghdad in the United States.
U.S. intelligence analysts have said in recent days that they have tracked down Iranian air defenses, maritime forces and other security units on high alert. They also noted that Iran has moved more short-range missiles and drones to Iraq.
But senior Defense Department officials acknowledge that they can not know whether Iran or its Shiite representatives in Iraq are ready to defeat US troops, or that they are preparing defense measures in case Mr. Trump ordered a preventative attack on them.