WASHINGTON: The USS Gerald R. Ford will depart for Europe next week, a Navy official said Friday, placing a third American aircraft carrier in closer proximity to the Middle East as Israel and Iran trade strikes.

Israel launched an unprecedented air campaign against Iran last week, and US President Donald Trump has said he is weighing whether to join Israel in the fight.

“The Gerald Ford carrier strike group will depart Norfolk (Virginia) the morning of June 24 for a regularly scheduled deployment to the US European Command area of responsibility,” the Navy official said.

The USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group has been operating in the Middle East since earlier this year, taking part in an air campaign against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

And a US defense official has confirmed that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth ordered the Nimitz carrier strike group to the Middle East, saying it was “to sustain our defensive posture and safeguard American personnel.”

Trump said Thursday he will decide whether to join Israel’s strikes on Iran within the next two weeks, citing a chance of negotiations to end the conflict.

That deadline comes after a tense few days in which the US president publicly mulled hitting Iran and said that Tehran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was an “easy target.”

Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path toward a deal to replace the nuclear deal with Iran that he tore up in his first term in 2018, but has since backed Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military top brass.

A key issue is that the United States is the only country with the huge “bunker buster” bombs that could destroy Iran’s crucial Fordo nuclear enrichment plant.

A number of key figures in his “Make America Great Again” movement have vocally opposed US strikes on Iran, and Trump’s promise to extract the United States from its “forever wars” in the Middle East played a role in his 2016 and 2024 election wins.