By Rudi Maxwell, ABC, and wires
Photo: US Navy: Seaman Daniel Kimmelman
As Donald Trump threatens a strike on Iran that would make previous assaults look like "peanuts", a United States aircraft carrier, supporting warships, fighter jets and air-defence systems, has arrived in the Middle East.
Trump said he had dispatched the US naval strike group to the area "just in case".
"We have a big armada next to Iran. Bigger than Venezuela," Trump told the Axios news site on Monday, weeks after the US military seized Venezuelan President NicolΓ‘s Maduro.
The world is waiting to see if this signals Mr Trump's readiness to strike Iran again.
So what forces have been sent to the Middle East, and is their presence a signal that yet another war could start in the region?
What forces has the US sent to Iran?
A US naval strike group led by aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln headed to Middle Eastern waters this week.
America's biggest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, has been in the Caribbean since November for Operation Southern Spear, which has targeted Venezuela and includes nearly a dozen navy ships and about 12,000 sailors and marines.
The USS Abraham Lincoln and three accompanying destroyers left the South China Sea and began heading west last week, a US Navy official said.
Those warships join three littoral combat ships - relatively small vessels designed for operations near the shore - that were in port in Bahrain on Friday, as well as two other US Navy destroyers, which were at sea in the Persian Gulf.
The arrival of the carrier strike group means a total of about 5700 additional service members.
A U.S.
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