The US defense chief says an Israeli shift would ease fears of regional war

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said Wednesday that fears of a broader regional war in the Middle East would likely diminish once Israel transitions its military mission in Gaza to lower-intensity combat operations.

Asked whether a decision by Israel to shift from high-intensity operations to more targeted, intelligence-led missions, as the Biden administration has repeatedly urged in recent days, could risk a broader conflict with Iran and its regional allies reduce, Mr Austin replied. indicated it would help.

“If that happens,” Mr. Austin said, “it makes sense that we would see some of that, you would see a reduction in activity.”

Mr. Austin did not elaborate on his comments, which he made in response to questions from reporters traveling with him aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford. But other senior government officials have said privately that the rising death toll in Gaza — now around 20,000 people, according to health officials there — is fueling the momentum of Iranian proxy attacks on Israel and its allies.

President Biden also said last week that Israel was losing international support over its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza.

The secretary’s comments underscored the administration’s efforts to limit the war between Israel and Hamas to Gaza and prevent it from spiraling into a broader regional conflict.

On October 8, the day after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people, Mr Biden ordered the aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean, off the Israeli coast, in an attempt to dissuade Iran and its allies in the region to deter the war from spreading.

So far, that deterrent has held, but just barely.

Israel and Hezbollah are increasingly exchanging fire along Israel’s northern border, threatening to open a second front in the war. Iranian-backed militias have carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, wounding nearly six dozen soldiers. And Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired more than 100 missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea, prompting the Pentagon this week to create a new naval task force to counter the threat.

“Certainly we are concerned about the conflict and the crisis spreading to the wider region, but so far I think we have done a very good job in preventing that, and we will continue to focus on that,” said the Mr. Austin. told reporters after meeting with sailors in the ship’s cavernous hangar bay.

Mr. Austin concluded a four-day trip to the Middle East this week with a 90-minute stop aboard the Ford, the newest and most technologically advanced carrier in the U.S. fleet.

The airline’s six-month tour – a momentous first operational deployment – ​​has already been extended three times due to the Gaza crisis, and is now in its eighth month at sea. The Ford was preparing to call at a port in France before heading home when he was ordered to hurry to the eastern Mediterranean. Days later, the squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets were within striking distance of Israel.

“We were the right ship at the right time,” Capt. Rick Burgess, the Ford’s commander, said in an interview.

Since then, the Ford fighters have flown more than routine training and 2,500 missions, though they have not conducted any surveillance or other operational missions near Israel or Gaza, ship officials said.

On Wednesday, Mr Austin thanked the airline’s 4,000-strong crew for spending the holidays away from home.

“It’s difficult for potential bad actors to take over naval space here,” said Capt. Burgess, a Naval Academy graduate and fighter pilot, who said no other ships, drones or other aircraft have challenged the ship since it arrived.

Just before leaving the ship, Mr. Austin saw two Super Hornets roar from the cockpit one after the other, flung into the air by a new electromagnetic launch technology on the Ford that replaced the steam-powered catapults used on all other Navy ships. for decades.

The cockpit is the vibrant center of this nuclear-powered behemoth. Sailors in light helmets and goggles, mostly in their early twenties, run around in vests and long-sleeved shirts color-coded to match their work: red shirts handle bombs, purple shirts handle fuel, yellow shirts handle the flights.

A second aircraft carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, recently moved from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, in case it is needed to respond to the recent wave of missile and drone attacks of the Houthi rebels on commercial aircraft. ships.

Back on land on Wednesday, Mr. Austin visited members of the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers, at a base in Cyprus. Five members of the unit were killed last month in a helicopter crash in the eastern Mediterranean.

The soldiers were crew members of an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that was on a refueling training mission when the plane crashed off the coast of Cyprus, the Pentagon said. The crash is under investigation.

The Pentagon has quietly deployed commando teams from the Joint Special Operations Command, including the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, to Cyprus to stand ready in case they are needed to remove U.S. citizens from the region evacuate.