U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Iran and the militant groups it backs against attacking Americans in the Middle East, while the White House renewed calls on Israel to avoid triggering a wider regional war.
Two days after Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut, the Pentagon elaborated on U.S. naval and air forces deployed in the region and announced a planned increase in defensive air support.
Israel’s attack on the Lebanese capital and its decimation of Hezbollah, considered the most formidable of the Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East, are further raising the stakes in the region and fueling U.S. concern about a possible Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that one goal of attacking Hezbollah is to allow the return of Israelis to the north of the country south of the Lebanese border.
“They want to get their families back to those homes and kibbutzes in the north,” John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“We want to see that too,” he said. “We believe and continue to believe that an all-out war with Hezbollah, certainly with Iran, is not the way to do that.”
Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who’s close to President Joe Biden, cautioned Israel more directly after Netanyahu set aside international pleas for restraint.
“The call for a cease-fire is really because of a concern that a ground invasion of southern Lebanon by the IDF might well turn into a long and grinding war of attrition, and concerns that Iran may well now retaliate,” Coons said on Fox News Sunday, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
US Presence
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group will remain in the U.S. Central Command theater, which covers the Middle East, and the USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group “will continue to operate in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said in a statement Sunday.
The naval presence is backed by fighter and attack planes, and the U.S. “retains the capability to deploy forces on short notice,” Ryder said.
Austin is warning “that should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every necessary measure to defend our people,” Ryder said.
_____
(Updates with Kirby comments starting in fifth paragraph)
_____
©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Originally Published:
