The Pentagon has ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean near Israel to deter Iran or Hezbollah from joining the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to U.S. officials.
A senior US official and a US official told ABC News that the USS Eisenhower carrier strike group will be ordered to the eastern Mediterranean to join the USS Gerald R Ford carrier strike group that arrived there earlier this week and is in international waters off of Israel.
“I have directed the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (CSG) to begin moving to the Eastern Mediterranean,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement confirming the deployment. “As part of our effort to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’s attack on Israel.”
That seems like overkill, but I’m no military strategist. Why would the US need 2 carrier groups even if directly fighting Iran and Hezbollah at the same time?
They’re there to pre-answer the questions “how quickly and how forcefully would the USA get involved if we did a thing? Are they too focused on Ukraine? Do they have any appetite for a new middle East conflict?”
Instantaneously. Overwhelmingly. No. Yes.
It’s better for everyone that these answers are readily available and explicitly clear so that nobody miscalculates. Deterrence is much cheaper than a real follow-through.
Well we don’t have anything better to do with them 🤷
It’s just a show of force so that Iran really thinks twice about doing anything, we both have nukes but only the US has the power to exert force overseas via traditional platforms & weapons.
It’s basically “if you want to join in it’s going to cost you everything, and your only option is nuclear weapons which we can match and more.”
It’s the best case scenario to keep Iran out of the picture because they’re just crazy enough to consider nuking Israel over this and if that happens it’ll likely set off a chain reaction.
Why is it that never happened during 2004? Israel attacked Gaza many times before, never did the US send this much military. Do the Americans know the amount of damage Iran can inflict on Israel and that’s why they are sending all this? What can Iran do? If not Iran, who?
The severity of the attack on Hamas’ part makes the US (and many others) believe that their response will be much more severe this time than before.
That means if Iran is going to become directly involved instead of through their Hamas/Hazbollah proxy armies, it’ll most likely be a nuclear counter response to Israel. Once nukes start flying it’s going to be incredibly difficult to de-escalate and there’s still a chance that countries like China and Russia will take up with Iran over it.
Mutually assured destruction keeps us safe, but in times like these it’s at risk of not being enough to stop it. So we send what Iran doesn’t have, overwhelming conventional military force to show that we can stop it without firing our own, thus calling Iran’s bluff.
What are you talking about? What nukes? Who the fuck is going to nuke what?
Israel and the US are the only nuclear powers involved unless we think that we are going to support Israel launching a nuclear attack. However, that would be incredibly short-sighted since it would (1) be completely denounced by the entire world and (2) give Russia’s propaganda machine an opportunity to use them on Ukraine without any push back from the West. Because of these reasons, I highly doubt the US would support Israel’s use of nuclear weapons, but I don’t deny that Israel would use them otherwise. The US sending a 2nd carrier group might have been part of a compromise in which Israel refrains from using nuclear weapons.
I was under the impression that Iran did not have the ability to use nuclear weapons though. Perhaps, the 2nd carrier group is to prevent Israel from using them
I thought Israel was the most powerful army in the middle east, what gives? Something is cooking, way bigger than killing Palestinians.
They were bored and wanted in