Carrier USS Truman Heads for Eastern Med as Tensions Rise in Mideast

 

As hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel escalate towards the threshold of war, the U.S. Navy has dispatched the carrier USS Harry S. Truman to the Mideast to reinforce existing assets in the region. 

Truman and her escorts are headed for the Eastern Mediterranean, where they will join the amphib USS Wasp and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. To the east, the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and her air wing are already on station in the Arabian Sea, where they are positioned to deter Iran.

Truman is replacing the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which was operating in the Mideast and providing "dual carrier coverage" until mid-September, when the Navy called her home. Roosevelt had been deployed for eight months, and the rotation gives her crew and her maintainers the opportunity to rebuild readiness. 

The deployment of Truman is one part of a heightened American presence in the Mideast as the White House works to prevent an existing conflict from growing into a regional war. Hezbollah has been engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire with Israel since October, when the Lebanese militant group began launching waves of rockets into Israeli territory in protest of the Israeli operation in Gaza. Israel has counterattacked by killing multiple Hezbollah commanders, most recently including senior leaders Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wehbe, and by striking the group's fighting positions within Lebanon.

Earlier this month, in a stunning act of sabotage, an Israeli intelligence service detonated nearly 3,000 explosives-laden pagers that its operatives had altered before their delivery to Hezbollah, U.S. officials say. The unprecedented attack drew immediate promises of retribution from Hezbollah.