WASHINGTON — Extra US F-15 fighter jets have arrived within the Center East because the Biden administration seeks to dissuade Iran from launching yet one more retaliatory assault in opposition to Israel amid a drawn-out trade of strikes that danger escalating right into a wider battle.
The fighters be a part of different American strike plane within the area amassed by the Pentagon in latest weeks in response to Iranian officers’ threats to retaliate in opposition to Israel. Among the many just lately deployed property are extra Navy destroyers and a number of other B-52 bombers primarily based at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
The Pentagon introduced the deployments final week as changing the strike capabilities of the USS Abraham Lincoln plane service, which was scheduled to return house.
Iran’s prime chief, Ali Khamenei, final week threatened to actual a “crushing blow” in opposition to the US and Israel for Israel’s expanded struggle marketing campaign, which has devastated Hamas in Gaza in addition to the Lebanese Hezbollah motion and its Iran-linked arms suppliers in Syria. On Thursday, Israel’s outgoing protection minister, Yoav Gallant, stated that Hamas had been defeated and that Israel achieved all its targets — a stance that has put him at odds with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has pressed to proceed the struggle and fired Gallant earlier this week.
US Central Command had not publicly confirmed the arrival of the extra F-15s by publication time. It was first reported by Israeli information retailers on Thursday morning and confirmed to Al-Monitor by two US officers.
Israeli warplanes disabled Iran’s Russian-made S-300 air defenses from afar on Oct. 16, crippling the Islamic Republic’s potential to defend its airspace — at the least till Moscow, whose navy stays slowed down in Ukraine, can resupply Tehran with superior air protection techniques.
The Israeli strikes got here in response to a second spherical of Iranian drone and ballistic missile barrages in opposition to Israel, each of which had been largely thwarted by Israeli air defenses supported by a US-organized regional air protection coalition.
