US aircraft carrier in the Middle East heading home

The Pentagon’s rare move to keep two Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East over the past several weeks has now finished, as the USS Theodore Roosevelt is heading home, according to U.S. officials.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the Roosevelt to extend its deployment for a short time and remain in the region as the USS Abraham Lincoln was pushed to get to the area more quickly. The Biden administration beefed up the U.S. military presence there to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and to safeguard U.S. troops.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

Prior to last fall, however, it had been years since the United States had committed that much warship power to the region.

Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100. Around a third of them are believed to be dead.

The Hamas run-Health Ministry says more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar thanked Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah for his support in the ongoing war with Israel in a letter released Friday by Hezbollah’s media office.

In the letter, dated Monday, Sinwar thanks Nasrallah for the “blessed acts” of Iran-backed groups in their support for Hamas since Oct. 7. Sinwar called the war “one of the most honorable battles for the Palestinian people.”

On Oct. 8, Hezbollah started attacking Israeli military posts along the border, triggering an ongoing exchange of fire that has left hundreds dead.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has approved $165 million in weapons sales to Israel to fund heavy-duty tank trailers, the State Department announced.

The systems include spare and repair parts, tool kits and technical and logistics support. They are not expected to be delivered until 2027.

Earlier this year, the U.S. announced a mammoth $20 billion weapons support package for Israel to include F-15 fighter jets. Like the tank trailers, those systems will not be delivered for several years and will not affect current Israeli military operations amid its 11-month-old war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

The Biden administration has had to balance its continued support for Israel with a growing number of calls from lawmakers and other Democrats to curb military support there due to the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza.

It has curbed one delivery of 2,000-pound bombs amid continued airstrikes by Israel in densely populated civilian areas in Gaza.

The decision to bring the Roosevelt home comes as international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

For a number of months earlier this year the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower remained in the Red Sea, able both to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The carrier, based in Norfolk, Virginia, returned home after an over eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy said was the most intense since World War II.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements, said the San Diego-based Roosevelt and the USS Daniel Inouye, a destroyer, were expected to be in the Indo-Pacific Command’s region on Thursday.