The U.S. carrier Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, has made a stop at a NATO base on the island of Crete in Greece before heading to the Middle East.

It arrived in Souda Bay on Monday (February 23). It will join the U.S. carrier Abraham Lincoln, several guided-missile destroyers, fighter jets and surveillance aircraft that have been moved to the Middle East in recent weeks.

The Gerald R. Ford, the United States' newest and the world's largest carrier, has been operating in the Caribbean with its escort ships and took part in operations in Venezuela earlier this year.

It has a nuclear reactor on board, can hold more than 75 military aircraft, including fighter aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornet jet and the E-2 Hawkeye, which can act as an early warning system.

The Ford also has sophisticated radar that can help control air traffic and navigation.

Iran and the United States are sliding rapidly towards military conflict as hopes fade for a diplomatic solution to their standoff over Tehran’s nuclear programme, officials on both sides and diplomats across the Gulf and Europe say.

Iran’s Gulf neighbours and its enemy Israel now consider a conflict to be more likely than a settlement, these sources say, with Washington building up one of its biggest military deployments in the region since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

SHOWS: SOUDA BAY, CRETE, GREECE (FEBRUARY 24, 2026)(REUTERS - Access all)

1. VARIOUS OF AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS GERALD R. FORD

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