The United States Navy has broken with its regular protocol in announcing the deployment to the Middle East of a nuclear submarine capable of launching 154 Tomahawk missiles.
“The U.S. Navy deployed a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Middle East waters via the Suez Canal, a spokesperson revealed Saturday.
The Pentagon's rare disclosure of the location of one of its Ohio-class submarines came amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran after an American military contractor was killed by a drone attack on a U.S. base in Syria last month.
The USS Florida arrived in the region before transiting the canal on Friday ‘to help ensure regional maritime security and stability’, Cdr. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, told Al-Monitor via email.
The deployment of the Florida ‘offers us additional flexibility, firepower, survivability, readiness and capability’, spokesperson for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Col. Joe Buccino told Al-Monitor.
U.S. officials did not explicitly link the submarine's deployment to tensions with Iran, but its arrival comes on the heels of other rotational shifts in U.S. military assets in the region.
Last week, the Pentagon extended the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS George H. W. Bush in the Mediterranean to support U.S. forces in the Middle East in case of further conflagration and moved up the planned deployment of a squadron of A-10 attack aircraft to the region, CNN first reported.
The attack on the U.S. base in Syria last month was carried out with an Iranian drone, defense officials said following the incident.
During a hearing before Senate lawmakers following the lethal exchange, top U.S. general Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley openly advocated targeting the Quds Force of Iran's IRGC to deter future attacks.
The USS Florida's arrival also follows a wave of rocket fire launched from Lebanon into Israel in the most blatant escalation on that front since Israel's 2006 war with Lebanese Hezbollah.
The rocket barrages from Lebanon, which prompted limited Israeli airstrikes against what it said were Hamas targets in response, followed international uproar over footage of Israeli soldiers beating Palestinians inside the Al-Aqsa mosque complex in Jerusalem.
Israel has pursued increasingly bold airstrikes into neighboring Syria against IRGC-linked targets in recent months as it seeks to clip what it sees as threatening components of Iran's military foothold there. A senior IRGC official openly suggested retaliation after two of its officers were killed in Syria by Israeli strikes late last month.
The U.S. and its allies have pointed the finger at Iran for a string of clandestine attacks on maritime shipping vessels in Middle East waterways in recent years, charges Tehran has denied.
Earlier this year, the United States and Israel conducted their largest-ever military exercise together, culminating in waves of long-range air strikes against mock strategic targets. Pentagon officials publicly insisted the targets were not modeled after Iranian ones, but Israeli defense officials have been pressing their U.S. counterparts for years to lend the U.S. military's long-range strike capabilities in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. -Jared Szuba, Al Monitor
The show-of-force move comes after China brokered a rapprochement deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, demonstrating the Asian country's growing influence in the region.
Furthermore, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia will soon visit Damascus and invite Syria to rejoin the Arab League.
Nonetheless, the Arab nations have had enough with U.S. military intervention and interference in their region of the world. Unfortunately, for those in the U.S. Department of State, American engagement in the Middle East is seen as a prerequisite to counter an increasingly influential and instrumental advisory in the flourishing Sino-Russian alliance.