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
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including