The Pentagon is bolstering its presence in the Middle East with ships, fighter planes and ballistic missile defense vessels as Israel faces threats from Iran to avenge assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
The moves announced on Friday by the US Department of Defense came a day after the White House said that US President Joe Biden promised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the US would provide new “defensive US military deployments.”
The deployments include sending additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the US European and Central Command regions, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement on Friday.
Photo: US Navy via AP
The US is also taking steps “to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense,” Singh said, without explaining those moves.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also ordered steps including moving an additional squadron of fighter jets to the region and dispatching the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is now in the Gulf of Oman, the statement said.
However, many of the moves announced, including sending the Abraham Lincoln carrier group, which is now in the Pacific, would take weeks to achieve, even though Iran might be poised to strike Israel imminently.
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said in a statement on Friday that he spoke with Austin and British Secretary of State for Defence John Healey, and provided “a situational assessment in light of recent security developments.”
Fear has risen of a spillover from the nearly 10-month Israel-Hamas war in Gaza as Iran threatened retaliation for the assassination in Tehran this week of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Iran-backed group.
Thousands of mourners on Friday converged around the flag-draped coffin of Haniyeh, in the emirate of Qatar as the fallout surged from his death in an alleged Israeli attack.
The funeral ceremony in Doha, Qatar’s capital, attended by members of Gaza’s militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, as well as Qatari and Iranian officials, was subdued.
Yet across the Muslim world — from Jordan and Morocco to Yemen and Somalia — angry crowds waving Palestinian flags rushed out of mosques after midday Friday prayers, chanting for revenge.
“Let Friday be a day of rage to denounce the assassination,” senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said.
Additional reporting by AP
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