Thousands More United States troops Heads to West Asia

Thousands of additional US troops are heading to the Middle East as the Trump administration has insisted that progress has been made in talks with Iran and has threatened to escalate the war if a deal is not reached soon. 

The aircraft carrier USS George H W Bush deployed Tuesday and is slated to go to the Middle East along with three destroyers, two US officials said. The carrier strike group consists of more than 6,000



sailors.

It comes as thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division also have begun arriving in the Middle East, according to two other US officials, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans. 

While the majority of those troops are part of a rotation of forces planned before the war, some are among roughly 1,500 paratroopers the Trump administration decided to surge into the region last week.