US deploys vast Mideast force as Trump pressures Iran

Courtney McBride, Tony Capaccio and Skylar Woodhouse, Bloomberg News on Feb 19, 2026

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The U.S. military is deploying a vast array of forces in the Middle East, including two aircraft carriers, fighter jets and refueling tankers, giving President Donald Trump the option for a major attack against Iran as he pressures the country to strike a deal over its nuclear program.

The deployment is unlike anything the U.S. has done since 2003, when it amassed forces ahead of the invasion of Iraq. It dwarfs the military buildup that Trump ordered off the coast of Venezuela in the weeks before he ousted President Nicolas Maduro.

While the U.S. isn’t likely to deploy ground troops, the buildup suggests Trump is giving himself the option of a sustained campaign lasting many days, in cooperation with Israel. It would look far different than the overnight strikes the U.S. launched against Iran’s nuclear program last June.

“Maybe we’re going to make a deal,” Trump said in a speech on Thursday morning. “You’re going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.”

The open question is whether Iran can possibly satisfy Trump’s demands and whether, by deploying so much military hardware to the region, Trump may feel compelled to use it rather than backing down.

The weapons at Trump’s disposal are formidable. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is accompanied by three Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, which can carry Tomahawk missiles. The carrier’s air wing includes F-35C fighter jets.

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the most expensive U.S. warship ever built at $13 billion, is accompanied by guided missile destroyers, and its associated air wing includes F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornets, E-2D airborne early warning aircraft, as well as MH-60S and MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and C-2A Greyhounds.

The two carriers provide “more options, and would enable us to conduct operations on a more sustained basis — if it comes to that,” said Michael Eisenstadt, director of military studies for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He said the buildup “signals to the Iranians the need to be more flexible in negotiations.”

Trump met with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and special envoy, Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday for an update on the negotiations with Iran. Officials met in the Situation Room on Wednesday to discuss possible action and were told to expect that all U.S. military forces deployed to the region would be in place by mid-March, according to a U.S. official.

A major strike against Iran — where leaders are anxious about regime stability following widespread unrest — risks entangling the U.S. in its third war of choice in the Middle East since 1991, against a more formidable adversary than the U.S. has faced in decades.

Trump’s use of the military in his second term has been characterized by short and successful engagements with minimal harm to U.S. troops, including bombing Iranian nuclear targets in June, attacking alleged drug-trafficking boats and the raid that extracted Maduro in early January.

But if fresh strikes on Iran prompt a wider conflagration, the president could face considerable public pressure. Trump spoke against U.S. engagement in foreign wars on the campaign trail, but has gone onto bomb Iran, Tehran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen and militants in Syria.

“With Iran’s air defenses largely neutralized by previous U.S. and Israeli strikes, the U.S. strike fighters would operate largely with impunity over Iranian airspace,” said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst for the Hudson Institute and a former Navy strategy officer. “There is always the risk of downed pilots, but I think the bigger risk is to ships. The same cruise and ballistic missiles the Iranians gave to the Houthis could be turned against US ships in the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Red Sea.”

Thousands of U.S. servicemembers in the region are also within range of Iranian ballistic missiles, and regime officials have vowed to respond with full force to a U.S. strike.

Beyond attacks on U.S. military assets, Iran could try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Oman and Iran traversed by 25% of maritime oil traffic.

U.S. strikes in June 2025 focused on three sites associated with Iran’s nuclear program, but a more ambitious effort to topple the regime in Tehran could involve attacks on sites associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and potentially senior leadership including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But Iran might be able to withstand such decapitation attempts.

“Israel already killed the top leaders of the IRGC in its opening strikes in the June war and Iran was able to reconstitute and respond within 24 hours,” said Jamal Abdi, president of the U.S.-based National Iranian American Council. “They’ve now planned for these possibilities in future wars and so now may be even more resilient if senior leaders are killed.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday Iran was expected to offer a response to the negotiations within “the next couple of weeks,” but did not preclude the possibility of military action before that. “The president will continue to watch how this plays out,” she said.