Patrick Wintour – The Guardian Jan 28, 2026

The threat of a US-Iranian war may be looming closer after Donald Trump warned time was running out for Tehran and said a massive US armada was moving quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose”.

Writing on social media, the US president said 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 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 is the starkest indication yet from Trump that he intends to mount some kind of military strike imminently if Iran refuses to negotiate a deal on the future of its nuclear programme. European diplomats had been expecting a crisis to develop over the weekend and detected signs of Israeli nervousness about the scale of possible Iranian reprisals.

Trump’s public justifications for mounting an attack have shifted from three weeks ago, when he vowed to Iranian protesters that US help was on its way. Later he said he had held off from attacks after Iran agreed not to execute any of the protesters. There is speculation that Trump actually held back because he did not have sufficient military assets in the area, Gulf States urged restraint and Israel counselled it needed more time to prepare for likely missile reprisals from Iran.

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

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, said 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 the material [Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material].”

In recent days it has become clear 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 the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, must leave the world stage, a demand Iran will reject.

Some will see the sudden ramping up 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.

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.

In the last 24 hours, Araghchi or the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, have 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 been insisting 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 are likely to 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.”

Source