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Trump Sends Second Massive Aircraft Carrier to Middle East, Ramping Up Iran Threats
Analyst Mouin Rabbani said the deployment comes as “Netanyahu is seeking to... inject poison pills into the negotiations in order to ensure that they fail and thereby set the stage for a new armed conflict with Iran.”
Feb 13, 2026
President Donald Trump further escalated his threats to attack Iran on Thursday by deploying another massive aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
According to Axios, Trump decided to send the USS Gerald Ford to the region shortly after his Wednesday talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the seventh such meeting in just over a year since he returned to the presidency.
The Ford, America’s largest aircraft carrier, will take approximately 3-4 weeks to reach the Persian Gulf from Venezuela, where it was used as part of Trump’s operation to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro in January. It will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was sent to the region earlier this month.
Trump has said he wants to finalize a new nuclear deal with Iran by next month after ripping up the old one during his first term, and has threatened war if one is not reached.
Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian has said Iran is open to making a deal to limit its capabilities to develop nuclear weapons in the future and to allow weapons inspectors to ensure compliance with the deal.
“We are not seeking nuclear weapons, and we are ready for any kind of verification,” Pezeshkian said on Wednesday.
However, its leaders have said they are not willing to negotiate on their broader ballistic missile program, which they view as the only deterrent against attacks by Israel and the US.
Netanyahu, who met with Trump for nearly two and a half hours on Wednesday, has pushed the president to pursue maximalist demands that Iran is unlikely to accept.
"I said that any agreement must include... not just the nuclear issue, but also the ballistic missiles and the Iranian proxies in the region," Netanyahu said.
Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani said in an interview Thursday with Democracy Now that "what Netanyahu is seeking to do with this visit is to inject poison pills into the negotiations in order to ensure that they fail and thereby set the stage for a new armed conflict with Iran."
So far, this appears not to have worked, as Trump has said he is willing to negotiate on the narrower issue of nuclear weapons.
But, according to Rabbani, "it's really impossible to take any statement he says either seriously or literally because his subsequent actions could either be a very accurate reflection of what he said or the precise opposite."
"Trump seems to think that a deal limited to the nuclear issue may be preferable to going to war to tackle everything else," said Christian Emery, an associate professor of international politics at the University College London. "Yet opponents of US military action, which include all of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies except Israel, should still be worried."
"It is far from clear whether Iran will offer the kind of nuclear deal Trump would find acceptable, and Trump himself does not seem to know what else to do other than double down on military threats," Emery said. "That alone may scupper the talks."
"The danger here... is that Washington, encouraged by Israel, is looking at Iran as a substantially weakened power," Rabbani said. "It has taken note of the widespread unrest in Iran last month. And coming straight off the successful abduction of the Venezuelan president, they may believe that it's just going to be one and done and that there can be a limited clean conflict with Iran."
“But of course, Iran is a very different kettle of fish than Venezuela,” he continued. “Iran has already indicated that should there be a new armed conflict, it will observe neither strategic patience nor restraint or proportionality as it has in previous realms.”
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Iran’s Comprehensive Peace Proposal to the United States
The Middle East stands at a crossroads between endless war and comprehensive peace. A framework for peace does exist. Will the US finally seize it?
Feb 09, 2026
History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: "If the Iranians want to meet, we're ready." He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.
On February 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s responded to the United States’ proposal for a comprehensive peace. In his speech at the Al Jazeera Forum, the foreign minister addressed the root cause of regional instability – “Palestine… is the defining question of justice in West Asia and beyond” and he proposed a path forward.
The Foreign Minister’s statement is correct. The failure to resolve the issue of Palestinian statehood has indeed fueled every major regional conflict since 1948. The Arab-Israeli wars, the rise of anti-Israel militancy, the regional polarization, and the repeated cycles of violence, all derive from the failure to create a State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel. Gaza represents the most devastating chapter in this conflict, where Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine was followed by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and then by Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.
In his speech, Araghchi condemned Israel’s expansionist project “pursued under the banner of security.” He warned of the annexation of the West Bank, which Israeli government officials, as National Security Minister Ben Gvir, continually call for, and for which the Knesset has already passed a motion.
Araghchi also highlighted another fundamental dimension of Israeli strategy which is the pursuit of permanent military supremacy across the region. He said that Israel’s expansionist project requires that “neighboring countries be weakened—militarily, technologically, economically, and socially—so that the Israeli regime permanently enjoys the upper hand.” This is indeed the Clean Break doctrine of Prime Minister Netanyahu, dating back 30 years. It has been avidly supported by the US through 100 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel since 2000, diplomatic cover at the UN via repeated vetoes, and the consistent US rejection of accountability measures for Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.
Israel’s impunity has destabilized the region, fueling arms races, proxy wars, and cycles of revenge. It has also corroded what remains of the international legal order. The abuse of international law by the US and Israel with much of Europe remaining silent, has gravely weakened the UN Charter, leaving the UN close to collapse.
In the concluding remarks of his speech, he offered the US a political solution and path forward. “The path to stability is clear: justice for Palestine, accountability for crimes, an end to occupation and apartheid, and a regional order built on sovereignty, equality, and cooperation. If the world wants peace, it must stop rewarding aggression. If the world wants stability, it must stop enabling expansionism.”
This is a valid and constructive response to Rubio’s call for comprehensive diplomacy.
This framework could address all the interlocking dimensions of the region’s conflict. The end of Israel’s expansion and occupation of Palestine, and Israel’s return to the borders of June 4, 1967, would bring an end to outside funding and arming of proxy groups in the region. The creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel would enhance Israel’s security as well as that of its neighbors. A renewed nuclear agreement with Iran, strictly limiting Iran to peaceful nuclear activities and paired with the lifting of US and EU sanctions, would add a crucial pillar of regional stability. Iran already agreed to such a nuclear framework a decade ago, in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. It was the US during Trump's first term, not Iran, that withdrew from the agreement.
A comprehensive peace reflects the foundation of modern collective security doctrine, including the United Nations Charter itself. Durable peace requires mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and equal security guarantees for all states.
Regional security is the shared responsibility of all states in the region, and each of them faces a historic obligation. This comprehensive peace proposal is not new, it has been advocated for decades by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57 Muslim‑majority countries) and the League of Arab States (22 Arab States). Ever since the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, all of these countries have endorsed, on a yearly basis, the framework of land-for-peace. All major Arab and Islamic states, allies of the US, have played a crucial role in facilitating the latest round of US-Iranian negotiations in Oman. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has clearly reminded the US that it will normalize relations with Israel only on the condition of the establishment of a Palestinian State.
The United States faces a moment of truth. Does it really want peace, or does it want to follow Israel’s extremism? For decades, the US has blindly followed Israeli misguided objectives. Domestic political pressures, powerful lobbying networks, strategic miscalculations, and perhaps a bit of blackmail lurking in the Epstein files (who knows?) have combined to subordinate American diplomacy to Israel’s regional ambitions.
The US subservience to Israel does not serve American interests. It has drawn the United States into repeated regional wars, undermined global trust in American foreign policy, and weakened the international legal order that Washington itself helped to construct after 1945.
A comprehensive peace offers the US a rare opportunity to correct course. By negotiating a comprehensive regional peace grounded in international law, the United States could reclaim genuine diplomacy and help to establish a stable regional security architecture that benefits all parties, including Israel and Palestine.
The Middle East stands at a crossroads between endless war and comprehensive peace. The framework for peace exists. It requires first and foremost Palestinian statehood, security guarantees for Israel and the rest of the region, a peaceful nuclear deal restoring the basic agreement adopted by the UN a decade ago, lifting of economic sanctions, the unbiased enforcement of international law, and a diplomatic architecture that replaces military force with security cooperation. The world should rally behind a comprehensive framework and take this historic opportunity to achieve regional peace.
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US Warship Downs Iranian Drone, Heightening Risk of 'Illegal and Catastrophic War'
"Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy," Phyllis Bennis of Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.
Feb 03, 2026
Amid recent reports that war is "imminent," the US military shot down an Iranian drone on Tuesday as it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, according to a US official who spoke with Reuters.
Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told the Associated Press that the drone “aggressively approached” the Lincoln with “unclear intent," and kept flying toward the aircraft carrier “despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters."
It came after another tense encounter earlier in the day, during which the US military said Iranian forces "harassed" a US merchant vessel sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Lincoln is part of an "armada" that President Donald Trump on Friday said he'd deployed to the region in advance of a possible strike against Iran, which he said would be "far worse" than the one the US conducted in June, when it bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
After initially stating his goal of protecting protesters from a government crackdown, Trump has pivoted to express his intentions of using the threat of military force to coerce Iran into negotiating a new nuclear agreement that would severely limit its ability to pursue nuclear enrichment, which it has the right to do for peaceful means.
"Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted," Paul R. Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University, said in a piece published by Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday.
Other international relations scholars have said the US has no grounds, either strategically or legally, to pursue a war, even to stop Iran's nuclear development.
For one thing, said Dylan Williams, vice president of the Center for International Policy, Trump himself is responsible for ripping up the old agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which required Iran to limit its enrichment of uranium well below the levels required to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief from crippling US sanctions.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was tasked with regularly inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities, the country was cooperating with all aspects of the deal until Trump withdrew from it, after which Iran began to once again accelerate its nuclear enrichment.
"There was 24/7 monitoring and no [highly enriched uranium] in Iran before Trump broke the JCPOA," Williams said. "Iran’s missile program and human rights abuses surged after he broke the deal."
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, marveled that "there is an amazing amount of folks who still think bombing Iran's nuclear program every eight months or so is a better result for the United States than the JCPOA, which capped Tehran's nuclear progress by 15-20 years."
With the Lincoln ominously looming off his nation's shores, Iran's embattled supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned on Sunday that "the Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war."
Trump responded to the ayatollah by saying that if “we don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right.”
Despite stating their unwillingness to give up their nuclear energy program, which they say is legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iranian envoys have expressed an openness to a meeting with US diplomats mediated by other Middle Eastern nations in Turkey this week.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on social media that he had instructed diplomats "to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency."
Trump is also pushing other demands—including that Iran must also limit its long-range ballistic missile program and stop arming its allies in the region, such as the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and the Yemeni group Ansar Allah, often referred to as the "Houthis."
Pillar pointed out that Iran's missile program and its arming of so-called "proxies" have primarily been used as deterrents against other nations in the region—namely, US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. With these demands, he said, "Iran is being told it cannot have a full regional policy while others do. It is unrealistic to expect any Iranian leader to agree to that."
That said, Pillar wrote that "President Trump is correct when he says that Iran wants a deal, given that Iran’s bad economic situation is an incentive to negotiate agreements that would provide at least partial relief from sanctions," which played a notable role in heightening the economic instability that fueled Iran's protests in the first place.
But any optimism that appeared to have arisen may have been dashed by Tuesday's exchange of fire. According to Axios, Iran is now asking to move the talks from Turkey to Oman and has called for a meeting with the US alone rather than with other nations present.
Eric Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, said: "This is exactly the kind of miscalculation—or intentional escalation, by hawkish bureaucrats aiming to scuttle talks—that can drag us into an illegal and catastrophic war in Iran."
Under the United Nations charter, countries are required to believe they are under imminent attack in order to carry out a strike against another sovereign nation.
In a comment to Common Dreams, Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New International Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, emphasized the massive difference between the US and Iran's military capabilities and actions.
"There is no question of Iran having equal military capacity to that of the US," she said. "Its military has never been anywhere close to the size, financing, or power; its own military capacity, and that of most of its allies in the region, were severely damaged in the Israeli-US attack last June. However the Iranian drone was 'acting,' the real escalation has been that of the United States."
"Sending what Trump called his 'massive armada' to threaten Iran stands in complete violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the threat or use of force," she continued. "That is the real 'escalatory' action. The US needs to pull back its warships, warplanes, and troops, and engage in serious diplomacy. Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy."
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