Pentagon Sends Another Carrier to Mideast as Iran Conflict Heats Up
As Israel and Iran trade blows, the carrier USS Nimitz has departed the South China Sea and is westbound for the Mideast, according to USNI. USS Carl Vinson and her escorts are already in the Arabian Sea, positioned for possible contingencies.
Nimitz appears to have canceled a planned port call in Vietnam in order to depart swiftly for the Arabian Sea, according to an announcement shared by the U.S. embassy in Hanoi. USS George Washington remains in port in Japan as the sole U.S. Navy carrier in the Western Pacific. The Royal Navy's HMS Prince of Wales has recently departed the Mideast, headed eastbound as part of a scheduled long-distance deployment.
The air campaign over Iran is prompting a minor split in the Trump administration's defense establishment between those who want to help Israel's campaign and those who want to minimize the odds of another long war in the Mideast, according to intelligence-community outlet Semafor. China hawk Eldridge Colby - undersecretary of defense - is believed to favor keeping U.S. military assets in Asia, where they can be used to deter PRC aggression against Taiwan. Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of Central Command, is said to favor relocating more equipment to the Mideast where it can be used to defend or support Israel. (The Pentagon told Semafor that there is no internal split.)
"Right now, we've got assets in the region and we're going to defend them," U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News on Monday. "We're strong, we're prepared, we're defensive . . . President Trump hopes there can be peace."
Among the assets in the region is the naval base at Diego Garcia, where the U.S. Air Force stations strategic bombers for campaigns in the Central Command area of operations. This small outpost in the Indian Ocean provided the launch pad for strikes in Afghanistan during the War on Terror, and it was recently used for bombing runs over Yemen during the campaign against Houthi militants earlier this year. In May, satellite imaging identified six B-2 stealth bombers and four B-52 strategic bombers on the tarmac at Diego Garcia - all capable of delivering the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the most powerful known conventional bunker-busting bomb. This 30,000-pound bomb would have a far greater chance of reaching Iran's deeply-buried nuclear facilities than anything in the Israeli arsenal.
Open-source flight tracking analysts have noted a surge of nearly three dozen U.S. aerial tankers headed east, most landing in Europe - a critical enabler for a large-scale U.S. "air bridge," if desired. Publicly, President Donald Trump has called for Iran to return to the negotiating table "before it is too late," and he warned Sunday that it was possible that U.S. forces would join the Israeli campaign. On Monday, he called for Iranian citizens to "immediately evacuate Tehran."