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Key events
USS Gerald Ford, world’s largest aircraft carrier, at US base on Crete
The USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, has reached the US naval base of Souda Bay on Crete, en route to joining a massive military build-up in the Middle East.
President Donald Trump – who ordered strikes on Iran last year – has repeatedly threatened Tehran with fresh military action if it does not cut a new deal on its contentious nuclear programme, which the West fears is aimed at building an atomic weapon.
The Ford reached the Greek island on Monday, according to an AFP photographer.
Trump reportedly frustrated as he waits on envoys’ judgment over Iran strikes
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Donald Trump is reportedly becoming increasingly frustrated as he weighs up whether to strike Iran. The president has been told any attack would not be “a singular, decisive blow” and could risk drawing the United States into a protracted war in the Middle East.
Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the matter.
However, Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with what aides describe as the limits of military leverage, CBS News reports.
He has asked his advisers for options that would deliver a strike substantial enough to force Iranian leaders negotiate from a weaker position – but military planners have warned that there can be no guarantee, according to reports.
The president has not made a final determination on any strikes, as the administration prepares for Iran to send its latest proposal this week, ahead of what officials have described as a last-ditch round of negotiations scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.
Read our latest report here:
In other developments:
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Trump has declared that he can use tariffs in a “much more powerful and obnoxious way”, as the UK and the EU said they were seeking urgent clarity on the US trade deals they struck last summer. Trump threatened to escalate his global tariff war on Monday, after a supreme court ruling last week that he had overstepped his legal authority to impose his “liberation day” measures last year. More here.
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The 21-year-old man who was shot and killed after having entered Trump’s Florida resort on Sunday – while carrying a shotgun – came from a North Carolina family of the president’s supporters and had reportedly become increasingly fixated on the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files. The focus of the FBI’s investigation into the intrusion attributed to Austin Tucker Martin is tightening on his movements and motives. More here.
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The US military launched a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean, which killed three men – its third such attack over the course of a week. The Southern Command identified the three men killed as “male narco-terrorists” and clarified that no US military forces were harmed in the strike. More here.
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Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives, announced that he is inviting the family of Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil- and human-rights trailblazer who died last week, to the State of the Union address on Tuesday. Several other lawmakers have announced they’re inviting survivors of sexual assault by Jeffrey Epstein.
