US F-15s arrive in Middle East as Israel preps Iran retaliation

Another squadron of US Air Force F-15s arrived in the Middle East this week, the US military said, as Washington aims to persuade Israel not to launch a major counterattack in response to Iran's Oct. 1 ballistic missile barrage against Israel.

The F-15s arrived at an undisclosed base in the region on Wednesday, US Central Command said. They join additional US F-16s that arrived earlier this month, bolstering US fighter squadrons already in the region including highly advanced stealth F-22 Raptors. The United States also has several mid-air refueling tankers based in the region as well as an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Gulf of Oman within striking distance of Iran and Yemen.

Several US Navy destroyers are also in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean, where an amphibious-borne Marine Expeditionary Unit remains ready in case the United States orders the evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon.

The aim of the deployments is to reassure Israel and US-aligned nations in the Persian Gulf region while dissuading Iran from launching attacks on those countries or on US troops. Pentagon officials have refused to publicly rule out US military participation in the Israeli strikes. President Joe Biden called last week on Israel to exact a "proportionate" response and not to target Iran's nuclear enrichment sites or oil facilities.

Iran launched more than 280 ballistic missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 in retaliation for Israel's killing of longtime Hamas leader Hassan Nasrallah and the deputy operations chief of Iran's paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a wave of airstrikes in the suburb of Dahiyeh south of Beirut last month.

The strikes marked the latest Israeli assassination of a high-profile Iran-linked militant leader to catch the Pentagon off guard. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed a planned visit by his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to the Pentagon this week as Washington sought answers as to what Israeli leaders are planning for a retaliatory blow against the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu and Biden broke nearly two months of silence in a roughly 30-minute phone call on Wednesday. The White House readout of the call made no mention of the Biden administration's previous initiative alongside France to push for a cease-fire in Lebanon.

Biden "affirmed his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security" during the call, the White House said.

The US administration appears to have abandoned its previous calls for a 21-day cease-fire in Lebanon over the past week after Netanyahu rebuffed the request during the UN General Assembly summit in New York. 

Instead, US officials have recently begun saying they aim to work with US-aligned nations in the region "to create the conditions" for a cease-fire in Lebanon — in other words, to allow Israel to weaken Hezbollah as a player in Lebanese politics. Arab diplomats have privately warned the US government that interfering with Lebanon's internal political impasse could trigger civil conflict in the economically broken country.

The Pentagon gave its green light for what Israeli leaders publicly indicated would be a "limited incursion" across the Lebanon border in order to destroy Hezbollah military infrastructure, which the Israeli military said would be used in an Oct. 7-style attack that the militant group had allegedly been planning.

More than a million people have fled their homes under intensive Israeli bombardment across Lebanon in recent weeks. More than 2,100 people have been killed and 10,000 wounded, dwarfing the casualties of the 30-day war in 2006. One quarter of Lebanon's geographic territory is under evacuation order by the Israeli military, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

"All indications that we have right now is that Israel continues to conduct limited ground operations across the border to remove Hezbollah attack infrastructure," Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder told reporters on Thursday.

Israel's formal objective remains to halt Hezbollah rocket fire into its north to allow for the safe return of some 60,000 Israeli citizens who have been displaced for roughly a year. 

This week, Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem publicly expressed openness to a cease-fire initiative mediated by Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mitaki. Qassem's remarks marked the first time Hezbollah has publicly signaled willingness to decouple its attacks on Israel from the ongoing war in Gaza.

"My initial response to this is: Where have they been for a year? For a year, the world has been calling on Hezbollah to stop the attacks across the border into Israel," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Tuesday.