US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the USS Theodore Roosevelt Navy aircraft carrier to return home, weeks after an initial concern that Iran might directly attack Israel.
The USS Abraham Lincoln, which arrived about three weeks ago in the region, at present is stationed in the Gulf of Oman with several other warships.
Two Navy destroyers and the Ohio-class guided missile submarine USS Georgia are patrolling in the Red Sea.
A number of other US warships are stationed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Earlier this year, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was stationed in the Red Sea for some eight months to fight missile and drone attacks on southern Israel and commercial shipping vessels by Iran’s proxies in Yemen, the Houthis.
The threat of a second Iranian attack on the Jewish State followed the July 31 assassination of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Tehran. Iran launched a direct attack on Israel this past April, firing some 300 rockets, missiles and attack drones at the Jewish state.
A US-led coalition of allies helped Israel fend off the attack.
CENTCOM military commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the large presence of a US aircraft carrier and its escorting warships have presented an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran.
The decision to bring the Roosevelt home is due in part to the lengthening war between Israel and its surrounding enemies, all of them Iranian proxies.
The war, launched from Gaza by Hamas on October 7, 2023, has dragged on for 11 months, with no signs of ending anytime soon.
In fact, precisely the opposite: Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, which joined the war against Israel on October 8, has continued to escalate its attacks against the Jewish State.
Nearly 63,500 Israelis remain displaced from their homes in 74 towns, cities and villages in the north, including some 16,000 children who are attending schools far from the homes in which they lived until the start of the war.
