Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford revealed Wednesday that he was the driving force behind the recent U.S. deployments to the Persian Gulf region, which he recommended after reviewing intelligence that indicated an ominous pattern in Iranian actions.

“We saw something that looked more like a campaign than individual threat,” Dunford said at an event at the Brookings Institution. The intelligence covered a wide area and indicated Iran and its proxies were preparing coordinated attacks. “It was the geographic span and the perception that that activity would try to be synchronized in time that caused us to look at that threat differently than 40 years of malign activity by the Iranians.”