The Unit­ed States will send the world’s largest air­craft car­ri­er to the Mid­dle East to back up an­oth­er al­ready there, a per­son fa­mil­iar with the plans said Fri­day, putting more Amer­i­can fire­pow­er be­hind Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ef­forts to co­erce Iran in­to a deal over its nu­clear pro­gram.

The USS Ger­ald R. Ford’s planned de­ploy­ment to the Mideast comes af­ter Trump on­ly days ear­li­er sug­gest­ed an­oth­er round of talks with the Ira­ni­ans was at hand. Those ne­go­ti­a­tions didn’t ma­te­ri­al­ize as one of Tehran’s top se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials vis­it­ed Oman and Qatar this week and ex­changed mes­sages with the U.S. in­ter­me­di­aries.

Al­ready, Gulf Arab na­tions have warned any at­tack could spi­ral in­to an­oth­er re­gion­al con­flict in a Mideast still reel­ing from the Is­rael-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Mean­while, Ira­ni­ans are be­gin­ning to hold 40-day mourn­ing cer­e­monies for the thou­sands killed in Tehran’s bloody crack­down on na­tion­wide protests last month, adding to the in­ter­nal pres­sure faced by the sanc­tions-bat­tered Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic.