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.”
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.