US Warns Israel That Carriers Can't Stay Indefinitely
The Pentagon giveth and the Pentagon taketh away. According to Israeli media, the Netanyahu has been put on notice that US warships could soon be ordered home and that they can't stay in eastern Mediterranean waters indefinitely to protect Israel.
Israeli media is reporting Friday that with regards to a potential wider all-out regional war and Iranian attack, a message was sent that tensions need to be reduced at some stage because "the US aircraft carriers will not be able to stay in the area forever."
Currently no less than two air craft carriers — the Theodore Roosevelt and the Abraham Lincoln — along with accompanying warships are in Mideast regional waters. They were deployed there following threats from Iran weeks ago.
The whole region braced for an Iranian response to the Israeli killing of Hamas leader outside Tehran Ismail Haniyeh on July 31st. The US moved warships closer to Israel in anticipation that the US would help shootdown potential inbound Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.
Apparently the guided-missile submarine Georgia, which can fire cruise missiles and transport Navy SEAL commandos, is also in the region.
Did Iran back off its threat for a major attack? It appears so, or else Tehran is just slow-playing the response, anticipating that the Pentagon will eventually withdraw its naval assets and that a willingness to defend Israel will subside.
All of this comes at a moment of rare US-Israel tensions, especially in the wake of Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring that efforts to achieve a ceasefire deal with Hamas are essentially dead.
"There’s not a deal in the making," he told Fox News. "Unfortunately, it’s not close." He said this during a morning Fox News live interview segment. This flatly contradicted recent White House statements and is somewhat of an embarrassment for the Biden administration.
Meanwhile divisions within the Israeli government and differences over the Gaza end-game have been growing:
Washington has sent a message to Israel that they "oppose the [potential] firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant," and said that they are "satisfied with the cooperation" with him, Channel 13 news reports.
The outlet says the message was "polite, but clear."
But even should the US carrier groups be recalled from the region, Washington weapons are still pouring into Israel. Some reports have said that without US arms, Israel would only be able to sustain its Gaza operations for a couple of months.
The conclusion of many analysts is that Biden could pressure Netanyahu enough to force him to strike a truce and hostage exchange deal. Instead Biden has been largely hands-off and Bibi has prioritized the military offensive to eradicate Hamas.
Netanyahu has laid blame on Hamas for there being no deal. He said to Fox this week that the group "don’t agree to anything. Not to the Philadelphi Corridor, not to the keys of exchanging hostages for jailed terrorists, not to anything. So that’s just a false narrative."
Mass Israeli protests in the wake of the recent recovery of six dead hostages have demanded Netanyahu's removal from office. The hostage victims' families also claim he has thwarted a truce deal for the release of the hostages at every turn, instead choosing to prioritize the military operation against Gaza militants.