The Pentagon’s widening role reflects both Biden’s staunch support for Israel and his mounting frustration with how it has prosecuted the war in Gaza.
A member of the U.S. Air Force stands at a Jordanian airfield ahead of an operation to drop humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Thursday. OVER THE GAZA STRIP — Lt. Col. Jeremy Anderson tilted up the nose of his U.S. Air Force C-130 and tipped 16 pallets of emergency food aid out of the cargo bay and into the sky above northern Gaza.
Before the war, “we were going to do a port call in Bahrain, we were going to host a king, we had a lot of things scheduled,” said Miguez, the strike group’s commander. Instead, his forces are intercepting Houthi drone and ballistic missile attacks“We’re going to be here as long as needed,” he said. More than 31,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and with Israel rebuffing the administration’s calls to get more aid to the enclave, there are few signs the U.S. military missions will wrap up soon.Earlier this month, the Army dispatched vessels, including the SP4 James A. Loux, the Monterrey, Matamoros and Wilson Wharf from Virginia to the Mediterranean, as part of an effort to deliver up to 2 million meals a day to Gaza by sea.
The Pentagon began rushing military assets to the region almost immediately after Oct. 7, initially to deter Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, from opening a new front against Israel, but also to avert a wider war.It took the unusual step of positioning two aircraft carriers, including the Eisenhower and the USS Gerald R. Ford, in the Middle East.
Since October, the Yemeni militants have attacked commercial and naval vessels more than 60 times, diverting global maritime traffic, driving up costs and sinking one cargo ship, the Rubymar. They have also clashed directly with U.S. forces, including firing on Navy helicopters answering a distress call from a commercial ship.
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