U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about the Israel-Iran conflict aboard Air Force One as he travels to attend the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 24, 2025.
Brendan Smialowski AFP | Getty Images
US President Donald Trump warned Iran on Wednesday that an “armada” was heading toward the country and that it must reach a “deal” with the United States over its disputed nuclear program or face a major military attack from the United States.
“A massive armada is headed for Iran. It’s moving quickly with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It’s a fleet led by the great aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, and it’s bigger than the fleet sent to Venezuela,” Trump tweeted.
“Like Venezuela, it is ready, willing and able to rapidly carry out its mission, swiftly and violently if necessary,” he added.
President Trump has said he wants Iran to come to the table to negotiate a “fair and equitable deal” over its nuclear weapons program.
“Time is running out. It’s really important,” Trump said.
“As I told Iran once before, get a deal! They didn’t. And then there was Operation Midnight Hammer, which destroyed Iran on a large scale. The next attack will be much worse! We must never let that happen again,” the president added.
“Operation Midnight Hammer” refers to a U.S.-led operation in June 2025 to destroy several of Iran’s major nuclear facilities that the U.S. claimed were being used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
This is not the first time Tehran has been warned that U.S. military assets are being transferred to the Middle East. President Trump said last week that an “armada” was heading towards Iran, but that he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. The warning came after authorities’ brutal crackdown on protests across Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi said on Wednesday that he had not been in touch with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in recent days and had not requested negotiations, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state media.
The United States is using a range of sanctions targeting Iran’s illicit oil trade as well as military threats and actions to bring Iran to the negotiating table to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
In 2018, during his first term in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the Obama-era nuclear deal, calling the deal “declined and rotten.”
President Trump said in March 2025 that he wanted to renegotiate the nuclear deal with Iran after reimposing a “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic, but efforts to restart negotiations appear to have failed.
But Iran came back into the president’s spotlight last month as public unrest erupted over the country’s continuing economic woes and its religiously conservative leadership.
Following Iran’s security crackdown on protests, mass arrests, and threats of execution, President Trump has warned Iran that he will take military action against Iran if it “violently kills” protesters. He later suggested that the threat had worked, temporarily easing tensions with the White House.
Some reports say up to 30,000 people died in the violence, but Iranian-based human rights group HRANA says 6,221 people have been confirmed dead and more than 17,000 deaths are still under investigation. According to HRANA’s Tuesday report, the total number of arrests reached 42,324.
