Iran is bracing for a possible US attack after Donald Trump announced ‘another beautiful armada’ was heading to the Middle East amid claims the regime has slaughtered 30,000 protestors. 

‘By the way, there’s another beautiful armada floating beautifully toward Iran right now. So, we’ll see,’ the president said on Tuesday in a speech at an event in Iowa. 

The United States Navy’s Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group entered the Central Command’s zone of responsibility on Monday, after being redirected from operations in the Indo-Pacific, providing America with the ability to respond to the crisis.

The flagship of Carrier Strike Group 3, the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), was escorted by the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Frank E Petersen, Jr (DDG-121), USS Spruance (DDG-111) and USS Michael Murphy (DDG-112).

Ambrey, a private security firm, issued a notice Tuesday saying it assessed that the US ‘has positioned sufficient military capability to conduct kinetic operations against Iran while maintaining the ability to defend itself and regional allies from reciprocal action’. 

‘Supporting or avenging Iranian protesters in punitive strikes is assessed as insufficient justification for sustained military conflict,’ Ambrey wrote. 

‘However, alternative objectives, such as the degradation of Iranian military capabilities, may increase the likelihood of limited US intervention.’

Tehran will treat any attack ‘as an all-out war against us’, a senior Iranian official warned. ‘If the Americans violate Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, we will respond.’

Iran has repeatedly threatened to drag the entire Mideast into a war, though its air defenses and military are still reeling after the June war launched by Israel against the country. 

But the pressure on its economy may spark new unrest as everyday goods slowly go out of reach of its people – particularly if Trump chooses to attack.

US President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House after arriving on Marine One in Washington, DC on Tuesday, January 27

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier (L) transits the Strait of Hormuz on November 19, 2019

Families and residents gather at the Kahrizak Coroner’s Office confronting rows of body bags as they search for relatives killed during the regime’s violent crackdown on protests 

The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers accompanying it provide the US the ability to strike Iran, particularly as Gulf Arab states have signaled they want to stay out of any attack despite hosting American military personnel.

Two Iranian-backed militias in the Mideast have signaled their willingness to launch new attacks, likely trying to back Iran after Trump threatened military action over the killing of peaceful protesters or Tehran launching mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations.

The Economist’s defence editor, Shashank Joshi, told the BBC’s Today Programme that a US attack on Iran was ‘likely in the coming days’, adding: ‘We are still on a path to a large, substantial US military strike.’

Tehran and Washington may still reach a deal, but Trump is calling on the regime to agree to terms it will likely find unfavourable – including giving up its nuclear enrichment entirely, relinquishing its long-range missiles, and ending support for armed groups in the region.

In addition to the carrier and warships, the Pentagon is also moving fighter jets and air-defense systems to the Middle East.

The US has additional F-35C and F-18 jet fighters that can strike enemy targets, as well as EA-18 Growler electronic-warfare planes that can jam defenses. 

It has also deployed F-15E jet fighters to a base in Jordan, and it is transferring Patriot and Thaad air defenses into the region to help defend American installations and US partners from Iranian counterattacks, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

Over the weekend, the US military announced that it would carry out an exercise in the region ‘to demonstrate the ability to deploy, disperse, and sustain combat airpower’.

‘It seems to me that every time Trump has directed this kind of military buildup, he has acted on it,’ Dana Stroul, former deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East during the Biden administration, told the newspaper.

‘With the threats of tariffs and other kinds of threats he’s made, there’s this whole chatter about Trump [backing down]. When it comes to the military instrument, he has not chickened out. He has been pretty consistent.’

As a ‘precautionary measure’ amid a spike in tensions in the region, Air India has stopped flights over Iranian airspace, rerouting its planes via Iraq, according to reports.

The Iranian regime unveiled a new mural on a giant billboard in Tehran’s Enghelab Square on Sunday, depicting an aircraft carrier with damaged and exploding fighter planes on its flight deck.

The deck is covered with bodies and streaked with blood, which trails into the water and forms stripes reminiscent of the American flag.

A slogan – warning the US to not attempt a military strike on the country – is emblazoned across one corner: ‘If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.’

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has said that at least 6,221 were dead amid Iran’s ongoing protest crackdown, including at least 5,858 demonstrators, 214 government-affiliated forces, 100 children and 49 civilians who weren’t demonstrating. 

The crackdown has seen over 42,300 arrests, it added.

However, Time magazine on Sunday cited two senior Iranian health ministry officials saying at least 30,000 people had been killed, while The Guardian reported a similar figure, adding that a large number of people had disappeared. 

Verification is hampered by a near-total internet shutdown now in its fourth week, as well as attempts by the regime to conceal the number of total casualties by pushing for fast, mass burials. 

Across Iran, corpses in morgues and cemeteries are piling up and overwhelming hospitals and forensic units, which have been forced to turn trucks filled with bodies away.

‘From a medical standpoint, the injuries we observed demonstrate a brutality without limit – both in scale and in method,’ an anonymous doctor in Iran told The Guardian.

He and his wife have begun treating patients at a location outside Tehran’s government hospital system after reports that young people were avoiding doctors, fearful that registering as trauma patients would lead to their identification and arrest. 

‘I am on the verge of a psychological collapse. They’ve mass murdered people. No one can imagine … I saw just blood, blood and blood,’ another anonymous medic said.

Iran’s government has put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, and labeled the rest ‘terrorists’. 

In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in a meeting, in Tehran, Iran, January 17

A giant banner depicting a US aircraft carrier and the American flag displayed at Enqelab (Revolution) Square in Tehran on January 25, 2026

The protests in Iran began on December 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. 

They were met by a violent crackdown by Iran’s theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two weeks of internet blackout – the most comprehensive in its history.

Iran’s UN ambassador told a UN Security Council meeting late Monday that Trump’s repeated threats to use military force against the country ‘are neither ambiguous nor misinterpreted’.

Amir Saeid Iravani also repeated allegations that the US leader incited violence by ‘armed terrorist groups’ supported by the United States and Israel, but gave no evidence to support his claims.

Iranian state media has tried to accuse forces abroad for the protests as the theocracy remains broadly unable to address the country’s ailing economy, which is still squeezed by international sanctions, particularly over its nuclear program.

On Tuesday, exchange shops offered the record-low rial-to-dollar rate in Tehran. Traders declined to speak publicly on the matter, with several responding angrily to the situation.

Already, Iran has vastly limited its subsidized currency rates to cut down on corruption. 

It also has offered the equivalent of $7 a month to most people in the country to cover rising costs. However, Iran’s people have seen the rial fall from a rate of 32,000 to $1 just a decade ago – which has devoured the value of their savings.

Cars burn in a street during a protest over the collapse of the currency’s value, in Tehran, Iran, January 8

Iran projected its power across the Mideast through the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ a network of proxy militant groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and other places. It was also seen as a defensive buffer, intended to keep conflict away from Iranian borders. 

But it has collapsed after Israel targeted Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and others during the Gaza war. Meanwhile, rebels in 2024 overthrew Syria’s Bashar Assad after a yearslong, bloody war in which Iran backed his rule.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, have repeatedly warned they could resume fire if needed on shipping in the Red Sea, releasing old footage of a previous attack Monday. 

Ahmad ‘Abu Hussein’ al-Hamidawi, the leader of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah militia, warned ‘the enemies that the war on the (Islamic) Republic will not be a picnic; rather, you will taste the bitterest forms of death, and nothing will remain of you in our region’.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one of Iran’s staunchest allies, refused to say how it planned to react in the case of a possible attack.

‘During the past two months, several parties have asked me a clear and frank question: If Israel and America go to war against Iran, will Hezbollah intervene or not?’ Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Kassem said in a video address.

He said the group is preparing for ‘possible aggression and is determined to defend’ against it. But as to how it would act, he said, ‘these details will be determined by the battle and we will determine them according to the interests that are present’.

Demonstrators take part in a march in support of the Iranian people in Lisbon, Portugal, January 25

Iranian officials reached out to the wider Middle East on Wednesday over the threat of a possible US military strike on the country, a month since the start of protests in Iran that soon spread nationwide and sparked a bloody crackdown.

Two nations, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have signalled they won’t allow their airspace to be used for any attack.

It remains unclear what Trump will decide about using force, though he laid down two red lines – the killing of peaceful demonstrators and the possible mass execution of detainees.

Iran’s state-run media, which now only refers to protesters as ‘terrorists,’ remains the sole source of news for many as Tehran cut off access to the global internet some three weeks ago.

But Iranians have become angry and anxious in the weeks since, seeing footage of protesters shot and killed while worrying about what may happen next as the country’s economy sinks further.

‘I feel that my generation failed to give a better lesson to younger ones,’ said Mohammad Heidari, a 59-year-old high school teacher in Tehran. 

‘The result of decades of teaching by my colleagues and me led to death of thousands, and maybe more injured and prisoners.’

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said its top diplomat, Badr Abdelatty, separately spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to ‘work toward achieving calm, in order to avoid the region slipping into new cycles of instability’.

The statement offered no details, though Iranian state media quoted Araghchi as saying third-party mediators had been in touch.

Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer and Trump’s friend, had earlier negotiated over Iran’s nuclear programe. There was no immediate acknowledgment from the White House of the call.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, saying the kingdom would ‘not allow its airspace or territory to be used for any military actions against Iran or for any attacks from any party, regardless of their origin’. That follows a similar pledge by the UAE.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE host American air assets and troops. Both also have faced attacks in the last decade. A 2019 assault believed by the West to have been carried out by Iran briefly halved Saudi oil production. The UAE faced several attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in 2022.

However, America’s biggest base in the region is Qatar’s vast Al Udeid Air Base, which serves as the forward operating headquarters of the US military’s Central Command.

Both Araghchi and Ali Larijani, a top Iranian security official, held calls with Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Qatar acknowledged the calls, but offered few specifics on what was discussed.

Iran attacked Al Udeid in June in response to Trump sending American warplanes to bomb Iranian nuclear enrichment sites after Israel launched a 12-day war on the Islamic Republic.

‘Our position is exactly this: Applying diplomacy through military threats cannot be effective or constructive,’ Araghchi told journalists Wednesday outside of a Cabinet meeting. 

‘If they want negotiations to take shape, they must abandon threats, excessive demands, and the raising of illogical issues. Negotiations have their own principles: they must be conducted on an equal footing, based on mutual respect, and for mutual benefit.’