Washington (CNN) Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented a military plan at a meeting of top national security officials last week that would send as many as 120,000 US troops to the Middle East in the event that Iran strikes American forces in the region or speeds up its development of nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported Monday.

The Times said the plan, which does not call for a land invasion of Iran, was ordered in part by national security adviser John Bolton.

Citing administration officials, the Times said it was unknown whether President Donald Trump had been briefed on the plan, including the number of troops. The Times said the meeting occurred days after the Trump administration cited "specific and credible" intelligence last week that suggested Iranian forces and proxies were targeting US forces in Syria, Iraq and at sea.

Trump denied the report on Tuesday, dismissing it as "fake news."

"Now would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that," he told reporters at the White House. "Hopefully, we're not going to have to plan for that, and if we did that, we'd send a hell of a lot more troops than that."