From Ekspert, Jan. 29, 2026, https://expert.ru/v-mire/iranu-grozyat-udarom-po-pervomu-litsu/. Condensed text:
. . . On Jan. 28, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that a “massive armada” led by the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was approaching Iran. The US president added that this fleet is bigger than the one used in Venezuela [see Vol. 78, No. 1-3, pp. 3-7]. As was the case with Venezuela, it is “ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence.”
He expressed the hope that Iran would “quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal” that would include the country’s rejection of nuclear weapons. The US leader called to mind the strikes on the Islamic Republic during Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. “The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again,” Donald Trump warned.
On Jan. 26, the Pentagon confirmed that the Abraham Lincoln’s US Navy carrier strike group had arrived in the area of US Central Command in the Middle East. It has been sent there from the South China Sea on Jan. 14 after Donald Trump’s threats to strike Iran in response to suppression of protests that began on Dec. 28, 2025.
The unrest reached a peak Jan. 7-8 after statements by Reza Pahlavi, the heir to the Iranian shah overthrown in 1979. Internet access was restricted in the country, and there were reports of casualties among law enforcement personnel and participants in the unrest. Iran accused the US and Israel of organizing the disturbances. The Islamic Republic’s prosecutor general reported that they were suppressed on Jan. 21.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry reported that 3,117 people had died during the unrest and said that reports alleging 30,000 dead, published by Time Magazine and sourced to high-ranking Iranian Health Ministry officials, were false.
According to media reports, since mid-January there have been other forces moving toward Iran in addition to the US carrier group, including more antiair defense systems, fighter jets and possibly submarines.
On Jan. 28, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told journalists that Iran was entering a third phase of its conflict with the US and Israel: The first phase was the 12-day war in June 2025, and the second was the disturbances. According to Gharibabadi, Iran’s enemies have now “switched tactics,” but “they will also suffer defeat in this phase, as during the two previous ones.”
The likelihood that the US will deliver a new strike on Iran is very high, believes Grigory Lukyanov, a researcher at the Center for Arabic and Islamic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies and a Valdai [International Discussion] Club expert: Public US preparations for war do not look like a bluff, given their scale and expense. At the same time, Iran’s ability to find foreign policy tools to contain this aggression raises questions.
Apparently, this is supposed to be a powerful knockout strike, Grigory Lukyanov comments. He believes that [the US] will hit the locations of the country’s highest military and political leadership with the aim of destroying the foundation of the existing political regime.
“Donald Trump is convinced that the decision-making center of Iran is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his entourage, and he will try to isolate or eliminate them. Unlike the Venezuela scenario, there is no need to convene a court for the ayatollah; his physical elimination fully suits the US. That is why special operations forces are not in play against Iran, as they were against Venezuela, but rather the Armed Forces, which will probably resort to missile and bomb strikes,” Grigory Lukyanov explains.
Donald Trump’s comments about a nuclear deal with Iran are an attempt to justify and legitimize the massive military aggression that Washington is preparing, says Nikolai Sukhov, leading researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Yevgeny Primakov Institute of World Economics and International Relations and a professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics’ Institute of Eastern and African Studies. He calls attention to how the US leader’s ultimatum, with its demand for nuclear deal negotiations, contradicts his own actions and statements, and also looks absurd given Iran’s position. . . .
Grigory Lukyanov emphasizes that what Donald Trump needs is specifically the elimination of the existing political regime. In talking about a deal with Iran, the US president is essentially demanding unconditional capitulation: total repudiation not only of its nuclear program, but also of its outward-facing military policy, as well as the elimination of the ruling authorities and the formation of some new government.
At the same time, Trump’s call to sit at the negotiating table is not so much aimed at Iran’s ruling authorities as at their likely successors, Grigory Lukyanov says. Iran’s current authorities understand Washington’s conditions well and would not accept them under any circumstances. Trump is aware of this, so he intends to liquidate the disobliging Ali Khamenei and to negotiate with those who, he expects, will rise to replace him.
This plan is far from perfect, believes Nikolai Sukhov, since US military aggression is likely to lead not to a managed transfer of power but to widespread destabilization. “Iran is not remotely Venezuela; the US won’t be able to replace the ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with its own puppet government. The fall of the regime will incite conflict between various gangs and foci of interest both inside the country and on its borders (including neighboring Iraq). This chaos will literally tear Iran to pieces and do horrible damage to the region as a whole, from the Caucasus to the Arab Gulf monarchies, not to mention macroeconomic consequences like the blow to the oil market. This is why a number of advisers to the US president, as well as the Gulf monarchies, are calling [on Trump] to reject force measures. But it looks like so far Trump is listening more to the hawks.”