The United States is sending a second aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Eisenhower, to join the U.S.S. Ford in the eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran from opening a second front against Israel from Lebanon using the Hezbollah terror group and its rocket arsenal.
ABC News reported Saturday:
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.”
On Friday, CNN reported that the amphibious assault ship U.S.S. Bataan is also being moved closer to Israel.
Austin visited Israel on Friday in a show of support, and has been in regular contact with Israeli officials since the war began.
Earlier Saturday, it was reported that Iran warned the United Nations that if Israel launched a ground invasion into Gaza to get rid of its proxy, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, it would launch a second front against Israel. Hamas killed roughly 1,300 Israelis and injured more than 3,600, while also kidnapping between 150 and 200 people, most of whom are civilians.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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