by Farrukh Abadi
The US announced on Friday that it will be sending more fighter jets, warships, and land-based ballistic missiles to the Middle East. This comes after what was almost certainly a US-Israeli joint assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, during his visit for the inauguration of the new Iranian president in Tehran, as well as the murder of senior Hezbollah official Sayyed Fouad Shukr by Israeli airstrikes in Beirut, Lebanon. Iran and Hezbollah have both promised retribution in what may be a coordinated attack with other resistance organizations at an unprecedented scale.
The reinforcements add to the existing US forces in the region to back Israel, which include 80 land-based combat aircraft; more than a dozen warships; the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier equipped with about 40 F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-35 attack planes; and the USS WASP Amphibious Ready Group, equipped with 30 airplanes and helicopters and 4,500 Marines and sailors.
The US also previously deployed roughly 1,000 troops to Israel in May to construct a pier under the guise of providing aid to Palestinians, but has since been used to support Israeli incursions in Gaza, including a failed hostage rescue attempt that saw more than 1,000 Palestinian casualties.
Among the warships being deployed is the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is currently in the Pacific, to relieve the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier. The USS Abraham Lincoln is being pulled from a Pacific deployment, just as the USS Theodore Roosevelt previously had been. The redeployment of forces from the Pacific to the Middle East, particularly of the strategically significant aircraft carriers, hints at the toll the ongoing war in the Middle East is costing US strategy. For years the US has aimed to pivot from the Middle East to East Asia to contain China, but is now having to return forces to the Middle East.
According to a Pentagon statement, the reinforcements are meant to “improve U.S. force protection, to increase support for the defense of Israel, and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies.”
US military forces continuously protect Israel from attacks, without which Israel would be unable to cope. The last time Iran attacked Israel, the US, UK, and France intercepted almost all of the missiles and drones launched, and even then a few made it through and hit an Israeli airbase. Given Israel’s heavy dependence on direct US military intervention, the deployment signals a particularly dire situation for Israel in the face of a pending, coordinated regional attack.
However, even direct US intervention has proven unable to curb the resistance. The US-led attacks on Yemen in reprisal for Ansarallah’s naval blockade against the US-Zionist genocide have so far been unable to hinder the Yemeni resistance, which recently struck Tel Aviv with a kamikaze drone just a block from the US consulate.
Attacks directly against US assets in the region are likely to increase as well. In late July, Iraqi resistance organization Kataib Hezbollah resumed its attacks on US military bases in their country, stating that they are no longer accepting the truce between the Iraqi resistance and the US military in exchange for the gradual withdrawal of US troops from the country.
