The United States military is deploying a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and multiple Patriot missile defense systems to the Middle East, reports from the Pentagon said amid the ongoing Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip.
In a statement issued on Saturday night, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said he had “activated the deployment of a THAAD battery as well as additional Patriot battalions to locations throughout the [Middle East].”
Austin claimed that in response to “recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East Region,” he directed a series of additional steps “to further strengthen the Department of Defense posture in the region.”
This is while Iranian officials have repeatedly announced that supporting Palestine is Iran’s foreign policy priority but that the resistance groups make their own independent decisions and Iran is not involved in Palestine’s response.
Austin also said he has placed an unspecified number of additional forces to prepare on “prepare to deploy orders” as part of “contingency planning,” to increase their readiness and ability to quickly respond as required.
“I will continue to assess our force posture requirements in the region and consider deploying additional capabilities as necessary,” Austin added.
The US has already deployed two carrier strike groups to the region, as well as fighter jets, and is preparing 2,000 troops to be readied to deploy there.
The Patriot is considered one of the most advanced US air defense systems. The THAAD is a highly effective, combat-proven defense against short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats.
Israel has unleashed a devastating war on Gaza since the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7 in reaction to the regime’s rising tide of violence against Palestinians.
The United States and other Western allies have said they will support the Tel Aviv regime as it prosecutes what Israeli leaders say will be a prolonged war.
Since the start of the war, the US forces in the region come under repeated drone attacks in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, on Saturday claimed responsibility for a drone strike against the US-run Ain al-Asad Airbase in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar.
Also the resistance group announced that they had targeted the al-Harir Airbase housing the American troops with two drones.
On Friday, two military bases, used by American troops and their military advisors, in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr and near the Baghdad International Airport in the Iraqi capital were hit by a series of large explosions amid rising anti-US sentiment in the two neighboring Arab countries.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that Israel’s air and missile strikes have killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including 1,756 children, with more than a million of the tiny territory’s 2.3 million people displaced.
