In a statement on Saturday morning, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that Secretary Lloyd ”Austin has ordered adjustments to US military posture designed to improve US force protection, to increase support for the defense of Israel, and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies.”
The spokeswoman also pointed to the details of the deployment, saying, “To maintain a carrier strike group presence in the Middle East, the Secretary has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, currently on deployment in the Central Command area of responsibility.”
Singh went on to say, “Secretary Austin has ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the US European Command and US Central Command regions. The Department is also taking steps to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense.”
“The Secretary has also ordered the deployment of an additional fighter squadron to the Middle East, reinforcing our defensive air support capability,” she noted.
According to the spokeswoman, “These posture adjustments add to the broad range of capabilities the US military maintains in the region, including the USS WASP Amphibious Ready Group / Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) operating in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
US officials said Friday that Washington is ready to send more fighter jets to the region in response to threats by Iran and resistance groups in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, who want to attack the Israeli regime in the coming days in retaliation for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau.
Haniyeh was martyred on the morning of Wednesday, when he was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
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