The U.S. is sending the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in order “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime,” National Security Adviser John Bolton announced Sunday night.

Bolton said the deployment was in response to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” on the part of Tehran, but did not elaborate. Such deployments are rarely announced in advance.

“[A]ny attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” Bolton said. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Finland on Monday, told reporters the deployment is “something we’ve been working on for a little while” and “we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests. If these actions take place, if they do by some third-party proxy, a militia group, Hezbollah, we will hold the Iranian leadership directly accountable for that.”

The strike group, which includes the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the guided missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and destroyers from Destroyer Squadron 2, departed Naval Station Norfolk on April 1 for what the Navy described as a “regularly scheduled deployment.” The strike force is under the command of Rear Adm. John Wade.

The USS John Stennis aircraft carrier strike group was in the Persian Gulf as recently as late March. The Stennis and USS Abraham Lincoln joined forces in the Mediterranean Sea in recent days.

The deployment comes less than a month after the Trump administration designated Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. In late March, the Air Force pulled its bombers from Qatar, one of the rare times since 2001 no bombers were deployed to the Middle East.

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Last month, the Air Force deployed a task force of F-35 stealth fighter jets for the first time to the Middle East.  Last week, some of the advanced jets carried out their first air strikes against ISIS, the Air Force said.

Earlier Sunday, Axios reported that the Trump administration was preparing to announce a new set of sanctions against Iran on Wednesday, one year after the U.S. pulled out from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the White House was considering sanctions targeting petrochemical and consumer goods sales by Iran, but Axios reported Sunday that the sanctions to be announced this week would target a different sector of the rogue nation’s economy.

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The U.S. Navy says there have been zero cases of “unsafe” interactions between its warships and aircraft and Iranian forces this year as well as last year.

The deployment also comes amid the bloodiest fighting in five years between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

Last Friday, two Israeli soldiers were wounded by snipers from the Iran-backed militant group Islamic Jihad. Late Saturday, the Israeli military announced that an airstrike had killed Hamas commander Hamed al-Khoudary, a money changer whom Israel said was a key player in transferring Iranian funds to the militant group.

Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson, Kelly Phares and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Republican congressional leaders are calling for a new investigation of media leaks surrounding the Russia investigation — possibly emanating from the intelligence community — pointing to internal text messages they say indicate a more widespread problem.

“[T]hese texts and emails demonstrate the need to investigate leaks from agencies or entities other than FBI,” Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael K. Atkinson, pointedly asking whether he’s launched a probe “into these apparent leaks.”

Attorney General Bill Barr testified last week, under questioning from Grassley, that the Justice Department has “multiple criminal leak investigations” underway concerning media contact by department officials during the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

But Johnson and Grassley, in suggesting a broader culture of leaking, pointed Atkinson in their latest letter to messages between former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page hinting other government agencies may have been leaking to the press — and the FBI could have been aware. This follows a previous letter from the same lawmakers regarding Strzok and Page messages indicating potential efforts to monitor members of the incoming Trump administration during briefings, as reported by Fox News.

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The specific messages include a December 2016 text, in which Strzok told Page, “Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they’re kicking in to overdrive.” Fox News previously reported on that exchange.

In April 2017, Strzok also sent an email commenting on an article about the Trump campaign and Russia by saying, “I’m beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn’t shared it completely with us. Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some of the leaks.”

Johnson and Grassley voiced concern about what exactly these messages mean, though their letter being addressed to the intelligence community’s chief watchdog indicates they suspect Strzok and Page were referring to either the CIA or some other intelligence agency.

During the Obama administration, the CIA was run by John Brennan and the intelligence community was overseen by James Clapper — both of whom have emerged as prominent critics of the Trump presidency since the transition.

“These texts and emails raise a number of serious questions and concerns,” the Republican senators’ letter said. “For example, who are the ‘sisters’ and what does it mean to say that the ‘sisters have [been] leaking like mad’?  What are they worried about, and what are they kicking into ‘overdrive’?  Which ‘agency’ is he referring to and why does Strzok believe the referenced news article highlights that ‘agency as [a] source of some of the leaks’?”

Fox News has reached out to the IG’s office and CIA for comment.

The Justice Department Inspector General, meanwhile, already is looking into possible leaks from the FBI, as well as FISA abuse related to a warrant application for surveillance of former Trump campaign member Carter Page.

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Those investigations remain ongoing, and Johnson and Grassley said they are anticipating reports on those probes “in order to gain a better understanding of what happened during the Russia investigation.”

The battle between congressional Democrats and the Justice Department over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report has reached new levels of vitriol, as some on the left call for Attorney General Bill Barr to be physically dragged in to testify or even locked up for defying congressional subpoenas.

The demands have escalated after the attorney general refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee last week amid disagreements over the format of the hearing.

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Though he testified a day earlier on the Senate side, Democrats on the committee still want to bring in the DOJ leader to answer questions on the conclusion of Mueller’s investigation. Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., also imposed a Monday morning deadline for Barr to turn over the full, unredacted Mueller report and additional files — a deadline the DOJ apparently missed, prompting Nadler to schedule a Wednesday vote on contempt proceedings against Barr.

Committee member Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., over the weekend urged the panel to specifically pursue “inherent contempt,” calling for Barr to be arrested by the Sergeant at Arms and be physically brought before the committee to testify—a tactic reportedly not employed since the 1930s.

“I think they will stonewall at all costs,” Cohen told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, adding that the situation “leaves us no other alternative than to have our Sergeant at Arms bring him in. He is being utterly contemptuous of Congress. He lied to the Congress.”

Inherent contempt, which allows a person to be held until they provide testimony, is one of three contempt options available, along with criminal contempt (under which an individual is charged with a crime) and civil judgment (leading to a civil court process)

Cohen added: “You have to have him sit for a hearing and you have to have him locked up until he agrees to participate and come to the hearing.”

Cohen said that he did not know what the committee would do but argued that without pursuing that avenue, a congressional contempt citation would be “meaningless.”

The DOJ has not publicly responded to Cohen’s warning, though a spokeswoman fired back last week when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Barr of committing a crime by allegedly lying in prior testimony. The DOJ called the attack “reckless, irresponsible and false.”

Still, the scenario Cohen suggested has thus far not been entertained by higher-ranking Democrats. Cohen — who drew mockery last week for bringing a KFC bucket to the no-show hearing, eating fried chicken in full view of press cameras and placing a toy chicken by Barr’s empty seat in order to suggest Barr is, himself, like a chicken — even suggested the contempt scenarios might not produce much action.

“It shows we want to hold him in contempt, but that fact is, he won’t be held in contempt because the Justice Department is not going to enforce a contempt citation against their boss,” Cohen explained. “It’s just not going to happen. Trump and Barr would fire whoever tried to do it.”

But Cohen isn’t the only one on the left calling for such a drastic measure.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich penned an op-ed last week titled “Congress should be ready to arrest Bill Barr if he defies subpoena.”

“[T]he House can order its own sergeant-at-arms to arrest the offender, subject him to a trial before the full House, and, if judged to be in contempt, jail that person until he appears before the House and brings whatever documentation the House has subpoenaed,” Reich wrote in the op-ed for Salon. “Congress hasn’t actually carried through on the threat since 1935 — but it could. Would America really be subject to the wild spectacle of the sergeant-at-arms of the House arresting an Attorney General and possibly placing him in jail?”

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“Probably not,” he wrote. “Before that ever occurred, the Trump administration would take the matter to the Supreme Court on an expedited basis.”

Reich also said that Trump’s alleged “contempt for the inherent power of Congress” is “the most dictatorial move he has initiated since becoming president.”

Another column in The Week, titled “William Barr is in contempt. Congress should send him to jail,” discussed a similar scenario.

“And there’s a simple solution for the House to enact if Barr really doesn’t show up: Formally hold him in contempt of Congress, then send him to jail,” Joel Mathis wrote. “That’s a radical suggestion, but this is a radical moment.”

Meanwhile, most prominent Democrats have argued instead that Barr should resign amid the controversy.

“He lied to Congress. And if anybody else did that, it would be considered a crime,” Pelosi told reporters. “Nobody is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not the attorney general.”

Pelosi’s public comments came after she, according to Politico, told Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., during a private caucus meeting Thursday: “We saw [Barr] commit a crime when he answered your question.”

She was referring to an April 9 hearing, where Crist had asked whether Barr knew what prompted reports that prosecutors on the special counsel team were frustrated with his initial summary. Barr said he did not.

But last week, The Washington Post first reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller contacted Barr, both in a letter and in a phone call, to express concerns after Barr released his four-page summary of Mueller’s findings in March. Mueller pushed Barr to release the executive summaries written by the special counsel’s office.

However, according to both the Post and the Justice Department, Mueller made clear that he did not feel that Barr’s summary was inaccurate. Instead, Mueller told Barr that media coverage of the letter had “misinterpreted” the results of the probe concerning obstruction of justice.

Pelosi, last week, was asked if Barr should go to jail for the alleged crime.

“There is a process involved here and as I said, I’ll say it again, the committee will have to come to how we will proceed,” Pelosi said.