President Trump told Axios on Tuesday he is "thinking" of deploying a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East, a signal that lands with unmistakable weight given what happened the last time diplomacy with Tehran stalled. The message is simple: make a deal, or face consequences.
In the same interview, Trump made the calculus explicit:
"Either we will make a deal or we will have to do something very tough like last time."
"Last time" was June, when U.S. airstrikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites — the capstone of more than a week of Israeli attacks. Trump added that the Iranians "overplayed their hand" and that during the prior round of confrontation, "they didn't believe I would do it."
They believe it now. About a dozen warships, including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group, are already assembled in and around the Middle East, Stars and Stripes reported. Dozens of aircraft have deployed to bases near Iran over the past month. The USS George H.W. Bush sits off Norfolk in a training exercise ahead of a previously scheduled deployment, though it remains unclear when it and its accompanying warships will be ready to sail. Navy officials referred questions about Trump's comments to the White House.
This isn't posturing in a vacuum. It's the backdrop for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival in Washington on Wednesday — his seventh visit in a year.
Netanyahu's mission
Netanyahu departed Israel with a clear agenda. His "first and foremost" goal, he said, is to ensure any deal with Iran covers far more than Tehran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Israel's demands are specific and non-negotiable in their framing:
- All uranium enrichment halted
- Existing stockpiles removed from Iran
- Iran ends ballistic missile production
- Iran ends support of proxy militias
These demands were previously communicated to Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during their visit to Israel before last week's meeting with senior Iranian officials in Oman. That meeting was inconclusive. A second diplomatic engagement has not yet been scheduled.
A person familiar with the details of Israel's position said Netanyahu wants "to present them to Trump directly."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior administration officials have repeatedly said these Israeli demands are included in the U.S. bargaining position. That alignment matters. It means Netanyahu isn't arriving to lobby for concessions — he's arriving to reinforce a shared framework and ensure it holds under diplomatic pressure.
The fear of a bad deal
Not everyone in Israel's strategic community is confident the alignment will survive contact with negotiations. Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran and Shiite Axis research program at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, laid out the concern plainly:
"There are fears that the U.S. administration might agree to two things that are problematic — an agreement with the Iranians that does not include the missile issue. The second thing ... is the possibility that Trump would be willing to agree to sanctions relief [for Iran] in exchange for certain Iranian concessions in the nuclear issue."
This is the ghost of the Obama-era Iran deal haunting every corridor. A narrow agreement that addresses enrichment on paper while leaving missiles, proxies, and regional destabilization untouched is not a deal — it's a concession dressed in diplomatic language. The Israeli defense establishment knows this. The Trump administration, to its credit, has signaled it knows it, too.
The question is whether Tehran's intransigence forces a choice between a comprehensive agreement and none at all — and whether a second carrier battle group parked in the Gulf clarifies that choice for the mullahs.
Gaza, the Board of Peace, and the broader chessboard
The Netanyahu visit doesn't exist in isolation. Trump hopes to announce significant progress on aspects of the Gaza peace deal, which Israel and Hamas agreed to in the fall. But implementation has been halting on nearly every critical front: Hamas disarmament, the entry of a committee of Palestinian technocrats to administer the enclave, full opening of the Rafah crossing from Egypt, establishment of an International Stabilization Force, and firm commitments from other countries to help fund Gaza's reconstruction. Israeli troops still occupy slightly more than half of Gaza's territory, with no timeline for withdrawal.
Meanwhile, Trump's newly established Board of Peace — an international body to oversee implementation of the Gaza plan — is set to meet next week. About 25 countries have agreed to join, though the composition tells its own story. European allies have declined or not responded to Trump's invitation. Only governments in the region and smaller U.S. partners have signed on.
The European absence is notable but unsurprising. The same governments that spent years insisting they wanted a seat at every table are now declining one that requires actual commitment. They'll criticize whatever comes next from the sidelines — as they always do.
Political analyst Gayil Talshir of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem offered a different read on Netanyahu's timing, suggesting the prime minister is traveling to Washington specifically to preempt the Board of Peace meeting and frame the visit around coordinating strike plans on Iran. According to Talshir, Netanyahu "doesn't want a photo op alongside Turkey or Qatar" or involvement in discussions on aspects of the peace plan he disagrees with.
That's plausible enough. Netanyahu has survived politically by controlling the frame, and a bilateral meeting with the American president is a vastly more useful image — both at home and abroad — than a multilateral photo line.
Strength as statecraft
The convergence of carrier deployments, inconclusive diplomacy, and a wartime ally flying to Washington creates a picture that should be familiar to anyone who has watched how credible deterrence actually works. You don't send a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft to make a bluff. You send them so you don't have to use them — and so the other side understands you will.
Iran has always maintained it has no intention of developing a nuclear weapon and that negotiations on anything beyond the nuclear file are off the table. That position was barely credible before the June strikes. It is less credible now, with an American armada already in theater and a second carrier potentially on the way.
The diplomatic window is still open. The Oman channel exists. But windows don't stay open forever, and Trump has demonstrated what happens when they close.
