Trump Warns Of ‘Massive Armada’ On Its Way To Iran: ‘We’re Watching Them Very Closely’

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump said U.S. naval forces were on their way to Iran, telling reporters on Thursday that he hoped the administration “won’t have to use” the “massive fleet” headed to the Middle East.

Trump spoke to the press aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from the World Economic Forum in Davos. At the summit, Trump signaled he would accept Iranian rulers’ invitation to talk, after stepping back from his threats of a military response if demonstrators in recent widespread protests were killed.

“Where do things stand with Iran?” a reporter asked the president. “The U.S. has got sizable military assets.”

The president claimed that while U.S. ships were en route, their presence was meant as a precautionary measure.

“We’re watching Iran. We’re watching Iran,” said Trump. “You know, we have a lot of ships going that direction just in case.”

He continued:

We have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens. We have a big force going towards Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely. I stopped eight hundred and thirty seven hangings on Thursday. They would have been dead. Every one of them would have been hung. This is like from a thousand years ago. This is an ancient culture. Very smart people by the way. It’s an ancient culture. Eight hundred and thirty seven, mostly young men, were going to be hung on Thursday.

And I said, “If you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit. It’ll make what we did to your Iran nuclear look like peanuts.” And an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place they canceled it. And they actually said they canceled it. They didn’t postpone it. They canceled it. So that was a good sign. But have an armada. We have a massive fleet heading in that direction. And maybe we won’t have to use it. We’ll see.

U.S. officials have anonymously confirmed the movement of U.S. military assets into the region to several press outlets, with some naming the USS Abraham Lincoln and accompanying destroyers as the bulk of the force.

Despite Trump’s claim that executions in Iran were stopped at his urging, Iran’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Movahedi, made clear on Wednesday that the “provocateurs” responsible for the protests “will be tried and punished in accordance with all legal procedures.”

Iranian officials told The New York Times they would charge those arrested with “waging war against God,” which notably carries the death penalty.

CBS News reported last week that the Iranian Government murdered between 12,000 and 20,000 protesters since unrest began, while Iran’s first government-issued death toll released on Wednesday claimed 3,117 people were killed– with 2,427 of those specified as civilians and security forces.

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