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THREAT OF US-IRAN WAR ESCALATES AS TRUMP WARNS TIME RUNNING OUT FOR
DEAL  
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Patrick Wintour and Andrew Roth
January 28, 2026
The Guardian
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_ US president says armada heading towards Iran is ‘prepared to
fulfil its missions with violence if necessary’ _

Trump has said the US fleet headed by USS Abraham Lincoln is larger
than that sent to Venezuela before the removal of Nicolás Maduro.,
Photograph: US Navy

 

The threat of war between the US and Iran appeared to loom closer
after Donald Trump [[link removed]]
told Tehran time was running out and that a huge US armada was moving
quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and
purpose”.

Writing on social media, the US president said
[[link removed]] on
Wednesday that the fleet headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham
Lincoln was larger than the one sent to Venezuela before the removal
of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and was “prepared to rapidly
fulfil its missions with speed and violence if necessary”.

Trump said: “Hopefully Iran [[link removed]]
will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and
equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all
parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!

“As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there
was ‘Operation Midnight Hammer,’ a major destruction of Iran. The
next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again.”

It was the starkest indication yet from Trump that he intends to mount
some kind of military strike
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imminently if Iran refuses to negotiate a deal on the future of its
nuclear programme. The post also reflects a remarkable shift in the
White House’s stated rationale for sending a carrier strike group to
the region, moving away from outrage over the death of protesters to
the fate of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting earlier this month, telling
them “help is on its way”, but he later backtracked on the grounds
that “the killing has stopped”.

There is speculation that he actually held back because he did not
have enough military assets in the area, Gulf States had urged
restraint and Israel had counselled it needed more time to prepare for
likely reprisals from Iran.

Activists say more than 30,000 people were killed during the recent
unrest. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told the Senate on
Wednesday that thousands had been killed and said the Iranian
government was “probably weaker than it has ever been” since the
1979 revolution.

[Marco Rubio]
Marco Rubio testifying before the Senate foreign relations committee.
Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Iranian missiles and drones could still pose a threat to US personnel
in the region though, he added.

About 30,000 US military
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“within the reach of an array of thousands of Iranian one-way UAVs
and Iranian short-range ballistic missiles that threaten our troop
presence,” Rubio said. “We have to have enough personnel in the
region … to defend against that possibility.”

Trump would also maintain the “preemptive defensive option” of
striking Iran if there were indications that it was planning an attack
on US troops, he said. “They certainly have the capability because
they’ve amassed thousands and thousands of ballistic missiles that
they’ve built.”

European diplomats had been expecting a crisis to develop
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over the weekend and detected signs of Israeli nervousness about the
scale of possible Iranian reprisals.

In a social media post written in Hebrew, Ali Shamkani, a senior
adviser to the Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said: “Any
military action by America, from any source and at any level, will be
considered the beginning of a war, and the response will be immediate,
comprehensive and unprecedented, directed at the aggressor, at the
heart of Tel Aviv and at all its supporters.”

The Gulf States and Turkey have been speaking to both sides, trying to
find common ground between Iran and the US, but Tehran has said it
will not negotiate under duress or with preconditions.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said at the World Economic Forum
in Davos that a deal with Iran ought to happen. He told CNBC:
“Obviously, the deal has to do with missiles. It has to do with
enrichment. It has to do with non-state actor proxies. It has to do
with [Iran’s stockpile of nuclear] material.”

It has become clear in recent days that Trump is interested in curbing
not just the remains of Iran’s already shattered nuclear programme
but also its ability to fire long-range missiles, always seen as the
centrepiece of Iranian military projection. In recent weeks Trump has
also suggested Khamenei must leave the world stage, a demand Iran will
reject.

Asked by Senator John Cornyn about the potential for a change of
regime in Iran, Rubio said: “You’re talking about a regime
that’s been in place for a very long time … So that’s going to
require a lot of careful thinking, if that eventuality ever presents
itself. I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer to what
happens next in Iran if the supreme leader and the regime were to
fall.”

Some will see the sudden escalation of the threat as a useful piece of
distraction at a time when Trump is under domestic political pressure
over the violence administered by homeland security officers in
Minnesota.

The Iranian mission at the UN in New York said: “The last time the
US blundered into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it wasted $7tn,
and over 7,000 American lives were lost. Iran stands ready for
dialogue based on mutual respects and interests but if pushed it will
defend itself and respond like never before.”

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he was not prepared to
negotiate under threats but he was willing to talk without
preconditions, terms he had relayed via numerous intermediaries to
Witkoff.

“Our brave Armed Forces are prepared – with their fingers on the
trigger – to immediately and powerfully respond to ANY aggression
against our beloved land, air, and sea,” he posted on X on Wednesday
night.

“At the same time, Iran has always welcomed a mutually beneficial,
fair and equitable NUCLEAR DEAL – on equal footing, and free from
coercion, threats, and intimidation – which ensures Iran’s rights
to PEACEFUL nuclear technology, and guarantees NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS.”

[Abbas Araghchi speaking at lectern with Iran flag behind him]
Abbas Araghchi speaking in Tehran this month. Photograph: Abedin
Taherkenareh/EPA

In the last 24 hours, Araghchi and the Iranian president, Masoud
Pezeshkian, have between them spoken to diplomats from Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and Egypt.

All three Arab states will be feverishly exploring ways to reopen
talks without Iran having to accept a preconditioned result. They were
critical in persuading Trump to hold back from mounting an attack
three weeks ago, but Trump now has greater flexibility of military
options and seems more focused on a nuclear deal rather than punishing
Iran for the bloody suppression of street protests.

There is deep suspicion in Tehran about talking to the US since the
two sides were in the middle of talks last June when Israel was given
clearance by the US to mount an attack on Iran designed to decapitate
its leadership and destroy its civil nuclear sites.

Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, urged the US to detach its
wider demands about Iran’s missile programme and support for militia
in the region from the nuclear file. He said he thought that if
Witkoff insisted on putting all items on to the table at once, Iran
would not respond.

Trump has insisted that Iran abandon its domestic nuclear enrichment
programme, permit UN nuclear inspectors to return and hand its
stockpile of highly enriched uranium to a third party, most likely
Russia. Iran has always held out against abandoning its domestic
capacity to enrich uranium but has been willing to set rigid limits on
its stockpile.

Since the last round of negotiations ended with an Israeli and US
attack killing 1,000 people and severely damaging its key nuclear
sites, Iran has been weakened further by a plunging currency and
rampant inflation.

With the nuclear sites already damaged, the key targets in any attack
would likely be Iran’s leadership. June’s attack revealed Israel
had near total dominance of the skies above Iran.

Almost all the Gulf states, fearful of Iranian reprisals, have said
they are not willing to allow the US to use their airspace or bases to
mount an attack on Iran.

Iranian officials said: “We will target the same base and the same
point from which air operations against us are launched, and we will
not attack countries because we do not consider them to be enemy
countries. We will increase our level of defence readiness against the
US military buildup to the highest level. If the Americans want
negotiations without pre-determined outcomes, Iran will accept it.”

_Patrick Wintour is diplomatic editor for the Guardian.  Andrew Roth
is the Guardian's global affairs correspondent based in Washington DC.
He covers the state department and US foreign policy. He was
previously based in Russia for more than a decade, where he was the
Guardian's Moscow correspondent and reported on the Russian invasion
of Ukraine._

* US-Iran confrontation
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* war threat
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* Donald Trump
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