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National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that the U.S. is sending the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East. Buzz60, Buzz60

WASHINGTON The Pentagon is sending a "very loud" message to Iran not to harm U.S. troopsin the Middle East after intelligence reports revealed a rising level of threats from Iranian paramilitary forces,a senior Defense official said Monday.

The commander of U.S. Central Command, Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, made an urgent request to bolster American forces in the region after observing multiple streams of intelligence that indicated threats to U.S. troops, according to the official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The threats were above and beyond what is usually detected.

There are hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Syria, as well as in surrounding Middle East countries.

The U.S.S. Lincoln aircraft carrier task force and a bomber group were dispatched to send the message to Iran to leave U.S. forces alone, the official said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks to the media on the sidelines of the Arctic Council ministers' working dinner at the Arktikum museum in Rovaniemi, Finland, Monday, May 6, 2019. The U.S. is dispatching an aircraft carrier and other military resources to the Middle East following what it says are indications that Iran and its proxy forces are preparing to possibly attack U.S. forces in the region. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)(Photo: Mandel Ngan, AP)

The Pentagon also announced Monday that it is bolstering its forces in the Middle East to counter Irans destabilizing activities and malign behavior.

Spokesman Charles Summers said the U.S. military has been prepared to deal with Iranian provocations.

However, the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force are considered a prudent step in response to indications of heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations against U.S. forces and our interests, Summers said. It ensures we have the forces we need in the region to respond to contingencies and to defend U.S. forces and interests in the region."

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That announcement follows a statement released Sunday night by John Bolton, President Trump's national security adviser. Bolton referred to "troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran as the reason for the deployment of the Lincoln and the bombers.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted Monday that Iran could not escape blame by sending proxy forces to attack U.S. troops. Any attack, he said, would be attributed to Iran andGen. Qassem Soleimani, who heads the elite Quds Force of Iran's hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

"We will not distinguish between attacks from Shia militias in #Iraq & the #IRGC that controls them, Rubio tweeted.

The Pentagon has a history of bad blood with Iranian forces in the region, particularly in Iraq. During the peak of fighting in Iraq, U.S. commanders produced evidence of sophisticated explosives used to kill U.S. troops. Known as explosively formed penetrators, the weapons required expertise and manufacturing that wasn't available to most militants in Iraq.

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May 6, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC/ UpdatedMay 6, 2019, 11:26 AM UTC

By Alex Johnson and Abigail Williams

The United States is sending a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East to send a "clear and unmistakable message" to Iran, President Donald Trump's national security adviser announced Sunday night.

While John Bolton said the U.S. wasn't seeking to go to war with Iran, "we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces."

He added: "Any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force."

Bolton said the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and an unspecified bomber task force were being sent to U.S. Central Command's region of responsibility, which covers the Middle East. According to the Navy, the strike group left Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, on April 1 on a regularly scheduled deployment.

The strike group consists of the Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier; the USS Leyte Gulf, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser; Carrier Air Wing Seven; and destroyers from Destroyer Squadron Two.

In a brief statement, Bolton didn't say what specific actions or provocations the United States was responding to.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also declined to cite specifics, saying Sunday night that the move was unrelated to the deadly violence over the weekend in the Gaza Strip, where Iran is widely reported to fund Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

"It's something weve been working on for a little while," Pompeo told reporters aboard his flight to Europe.

"It is absolutely the case that we have seen escalatory actions from the Iranians, and it is equally the case that we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests," he said. "If these actions take place if they do by some third-party proxy, a militia group, Hezbollah we will hold the Iranian leadership directly accountable for that."

The announcement comes two days after the Trump administration imposed new limits on Iran's nuclear activities. Trump said last month that the United States would no longer exempt any nation from U.S. sanctions if it buys Iranian oil.

NBC News has previously reported that Bolton, who has long been considered a hawk on Iran, has clashed with officials at the State Department who favor maintaining all of the waivers.

Last month, the Trump administration designated the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the first time the United States has placed the designation on part of another country's government. The designation categorizes Iran's military alongside groups like ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas.

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U.S. deploying carrier strike group to send 'message' to Iran

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April 13, 2019, 2:14 PM GMT

By F. Brinley Bruton and Ali Arouzi

The White House was looking to shake things up when it designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization.

It worked.

American terrorists killed in bombing, read a headline in Irans official Fars news agency, referring to an attack in Afghanistan that killed three U.S. servicemen. That came just a day afterthe Trump administration's announcement and represented a marked change in terminology by Tehran.

Iranian lawmakers dressed in military uniforms also chanted "Death to America" during an open session of Parliament on Tuesday. And according to the countrys Mehr news agency, Parliament passed an emergency bill requesting that countries that arrest U.S troops should hand them over to Iran to face trial as terrorists.

President Hassan Rouhani declared that the force's popularity would only surge in the wake of the designation, saying its members would be more "in the hearts of the Iranian nation" than at any other time in history.

The White Houses decision to put the powerful military unit with deep economic resources that answers only to the country's supreme leader in the same category as al Qaeda and the Islamic State group came a year after the Trump administration said it was withdrawing from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement.

Richard Nephew, a former director for Iran at the National Security Council who served as a member of the team who negotiated the 2015 deal, said President Donald Trump's decision to designate the Guard as terrorists would most likely make American operations in the region much more complicated.

If you have terrorists nearby ... what do you do with them? he wrote in an email. In the U.S. system, we have authorities that authorize military operations against them. The Iranians know that. Are they going to wait to be hit? Or will they hit first?

This is not a hypothetical scenario: For almost two decades Iran has expanded its influence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. In the process, it has had to operate close to American forces often as adversaries, but sometimes not.

And the designation raises legal issues, Nephew said.

What do we do if we capture IRGC officers somehow in Syria or Iraq? Do we turn them loose to the Iranians? They're terrorists! he wrote. And, what do the Iranians do if they capture U.S. terrorists in the Persian Gulf as they did in January 2016?

NBC News reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

Trump called the designation an unprecedented step that recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.

Those who opposed the Obama-era nuclear pact both in Washington and the capitals of U.S. allies in the Middle East allege it gave Iran cover to pursue its ballistic weapons program and deepen its influence in the region. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have warned for years of Irans growing power, and were bitterly disappointed when Obama negotiated it.

On the eve of pivotal elections in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday personally thanked Trump for the designation, as did Saudi Arabia.

But this week's announcement makes it less likely that Iran will accede to American demands and stop its pernicious activity in the region, according to Ilan Goldenberg, Middle East security director at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington.

The bottom line is the agreement was working, it was containing Irans nuclear program and we had total international support and unity around this issue, he said.

With the nuclear deal axed, that mechanism for the U.S. to address Irans behavior is no longer available.

Weve shattered all trust, Goldenberg said. You could have had a negotiation on ballistic missiles. You could have had a negotiation on regional behavior. You could have had negotiations on future additional nuclear agreements.

Sanctions against the Guard could also complicate any attempt by a future president to try to return the United States to the Iran deal, both advocates and critics of the move said.

This is part of a strategy by Iran hawks to layer on sanctions to make it more difficult for Democrats," a Republican congressional aide told NBC News when the designation was announced.

Several Democratic presidential candidates have said they favored having the United States re-enter the agreement, and the Democratic National Committee has said it supports a return to the deal.

F. Brinley Bruton reported from London, Ali Arouzi reported from Tehran, and Dan De Luce from Washington.

F. Brinley Bruton is a London-based senior editor for NBC News Digital. She focuses on news from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ali Arouzi is NBC News' Tehran bureau chief and correspondent.

Dan De Luce, Associated Press and Reuters contributed.

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Designating Iran's Revolutionary Guard as terror group could ...

Formed in the wake of Iran's 1979 revolution, the deeply ideological IRGC was designated by Washington as a specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) and sanctioned under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017.

Iran has been listed as a state sponsor of terror by the U.S. since 1984, and in 2007 its foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, was labeled an SDGT.

Many experts agree that the FTO label won't significantly deepen the impact that previous designations have already had. Inflation and unemployment in Iran are skyrocketing, with the sanctions compounding an economy long made stagnant by decades of mismanagement and corruption.

Oil exports, central to Iran's revenue, have dropped from around 2.5 million barrels a day before Trump's sanctions to just over 1 million per day now.

"The symbolism, however, is very important here," Vakil said. "The Trump administration is upping the ante in their maximum pressure campaign, because their policy as it stands today has yet to see any change in Iranian behavior."

In the past few years, Iranian-backed proxy activity in the Middle East including support for Houthi rebels in Yemen and for Bashar Assad's forces in Syria has only continued or increased.

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Trump's terrorist designation of Iran's IRGC: The economic impact

GOLDBERG: One of the aspects of this is the question of whether it's plausible that Barack Obama would ever use military power to stop Iran. The Republicans are trying to make this an issue -- and not only the Republicans -- saying that this man, by his disposition, by his character, by his party, by his center-left outlook, is not going to do that.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Look, if people want to say about me that I have a profound preference for peace over war, that every time I order young men and women into a combat theater and then see the consequences on some of them, if they're lucky enough to come back, that this weighs on me -- I make no apologies for that. Because anybody who is sitting in my chair who isn't mindful of the costs of war shouldn't be here, because it's serious business. These aren't video games that we're playing here.Now, having said that, I think it's fair to say that the last three years, I've shown myself pretty clearly willing, when I believe it is in the core national interest of the United States, to direct military actions, even when they entail enormous risks. And obviously, the bin Laden operation is the most dramatic, but al-Qaeda was on its [knees] well before we took out bin Laden because of our activities and my direction.

In Afghanistan, we've made very tough decisions because we felt it was very important, in order for an effective transition out of Afghanistan to take place, for us to be pushing back against the Taliban's momentum.So aside from the usual politics, I don't think this is an argument that has a lot of legs. And by the way, it's not an argument that the American people buy. They may have complaints about high unemployment still, and that the recovery needs to move faster, but you don't hear a lot of them arguing somehow that I hesitate to make decisions as commander in chief when necessary.GOLDBERG: Can you just talk about Syria as a strategic issue? Talk about it as a humanitarian issue, as well. But it would seem to me that one way to weaken and further isolate Iran is to remove or help remove Iran's only Arab ally.PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely.GOLDBERG: And so the question is: What else can this administration be doing?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, look, there's no doubt that Iran is much weaker now than it was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. The Arab Spring, as bumpy as it has been, represents a strategic defeat for Iran, because what people in the region have seen is that all the impulses towards freedom and self-determination and free speech and freedom of assembly have been constantly violated by Iran. [The Iranian leadership is] no friend of that movement toward human rights and political freedom. But more directly, it is now engulfing Syria, and Syria is basically their only true ally in the region. And it is our estimation that [President Bashar al-Assad's] days are numbered. It's a matter not of if, but when. Now, can we accelerate that? We're working with the world community to try to do that. It is complicated by the fact that Syria is a much bigger, more sophisticated, and more complicated country than Libya, for example -- the opposition is hugely splintered -- that although there's unanimity within the Arab world at this point, internationally, countries like Russia are still blocking potential UN mandates or action. And so what we're trying to do -- and the secretary of state just came back from helping to lead the Friends of Syria group in Tunisia -- is to try to come up with a series of strategies that can provide humanitarian relief. But they can also accelerate a transition to a peaceful and stable and representative Syrian government. If that happens, that will be a profound loss for Iran.

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Obama to Iran and Israel: 'As President of the United ...