By Santiago Vera García*
The US Navy deployed a nuclear-powered submarine able to carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles to the Middle East by the Suez Canal, a US Forces spokesman revealed Saturday.
The Tomahawks launched from ships or submarines, can attain targets as much as 2,500 kilometers away.
The Pentagon revealed details about the submarine’s location amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran after an Iranian-made drone strike killed a US navy contractor.
Pro-Iranian militias attacked a US base in Syria final month.
Iran has just lately elevated the frequency of assaults towards US forces within the area.
The USS Florida arrived within the area earlier than transiting the canal on Friday “to help ensure regional maritime security and stability,” Tim Hawkins, spokesman for the US Navy’s fifth Fleet, advised Al-Monitor in an interview.
The Florida deployment “gives us additional flexibility, firepower, survivability, readiness, and capability,” added Joe Buccino, spokesman for US Central Command (CENTCOM), additionally to Al-Monitor.
The fifth Fleet patrols the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Persian Gulf by which 20% of the world’s oil transits.
In addition, it additionally patrols the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, off the coast of Yemen, and the Red Sea, which extends to the Suez Canal, linking the Middle East to the Mediterranean Sea.
While not explicitly linking the submarine deployment to tensions with Iran, the announcement comes when the US is shifting and renewing its regional navy belongings.
Last week, the Pentagon prolonged the deployment of a provider strike group led by the USS George H. W. Bush within the Mediterranean to help US forces within the Middle East.
It superior that it might deploy a squadron of A-10 strike plane to the area.
US protection officers confirmed that an Iranian drone attacked the US base in Syria final month.
President Joe Biden licensed retaliatory airstrikes towards services utilized by armed teams educated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria, killing at the very least eight folks.
The Wall Street Journal quoted US officers as saying that they had dependable data that Iran would quickly be planning extra strikes throughout the area.
In the aftermath, throughout a Senate listening to, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley overtly urged focusing on the IRGC Quds Force to discourage future assaults.
The arrival of the USS Florida additionally follows a wave of rocket hearth launched from Lebanon into Israel in what’s proving to be the most well liked escalation between the 2 nations for the reason that 2006 Hezbollah-Israel warfare.
It ought to be recalled that Israel has additionally carried out airstrikes in Syria towards targets linked to the IRGC in latest months.
“We will avenge the blood of martyrs Milad Heydari and Meqdad Meqdani,” vowed IRGC spokesman Ramazan Sharif following an airstrike that hit Syrian territory attributed by the Islamic regime to Israel during which these two IRGC officers have been killed.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani accused Israel of bringing “war and insecurity” to the Middle East and “creating discord in the region.”
For this, Iranian officers have vowed revenge towards the Jewish state.
Earlier this yr, the US and Israel collectively carried out their largest navy train in historical past, culminating in waves of long-range airstrikes towards simulated strategic targets.
While Pentagon officers claimed the targets weren’t Iranian-inspired, Israeli protection officers have been urgent the US for years to offer their nation with the long-range strike capabilities possessed by the US navy to forestall Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
*Advanced scholar of International Relations at Universidad Austral. Dedicated to researching political, financial, and strategic points within the Middle East and North Africa.
With data from La Derecha Diario