On Friday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that he had ordered "adjustments" to the U.S. military presence in the Middle East in response to Iranian threats that come in the wake of Israel's killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran.
The USS Abraham Lincoln strike group -- which was already slated to deploy -- was ordered to move to the region and replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group.
It is not clear when the Lincoln will arrive in the area as it just pulled into Guam for a port visit Sunday. While the decision does not mean that sailors who are part of that strike group will be away from their families longer than expected, it does place them in the middle of escalating tensions as the violence in Gaza and Israel has begun to radiate to nearby countries.
Meanwhile, a Navy official also told Military.com that two of the five destroyers sailing with the USS Theodore Roosevelt -- the USS Laboon and USS Cole -- have been ordered to move to the Red Sea and toward Israel. That strike group is sailing near Iran in the Gulf of Oman, the Navy official confirmed Monday.
The service also has had the Wasp Amphibious Ready Group, or ARG, which includes the USS Wasp, the USS Oak Hill and the USS New York, as well as the destroyers USS Roosevelt and USS Bulkeley, in the eastern Mediterranean since before Austin's announcement.
Tensions in the region have been simmering since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a brutal and surprise strike against Israel that left more than a thousand Israelis dead and hundreds taken hostage.
Talks for a cease-fire and hostage release had been making progress but last week, following a missile strike attributed to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel conducted an airstrike in Beirut that killed a senior commander. The next day, Israel assassinated a top Hamas leader in Tehran.
Those two actions prompted Iran and its allies to meet to discuss retaliation near the end of last week, according to Reuters.
The U.S. State Department issued a "do not travel" advisory for Lebanon last Wednesday, citing "rising tensions between Hizballah [sic] and Israel." The U.K. government urged its citizens to leave the country "while commercial options remain available."
The Wasp ARG includes roughly 2,200 Marines as part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the service said in response to a list of questions on Monday. Their mission is to "deter the war between Hamas and Israel from becoming a broader regional conflict," a Marine Corps headquarters spokesperson said.
Pentagon officials wouldn't weigh in on the question of whether the USS Wasp and the Marines aboard the ship were planning on evacuating civilians out of Lebanon. Marine Expeditionary Units, or MEUs, are trained to execute several mission types, including noncombatant evacuation operations. In 2006, the 24th MEU evacuated roughly 15,000 American citizens from Lebanon, according to the unit's website, dubbing it one of the largest overseas evacuation operations "in recent history."
Marine Corps officials would not comment on how long the Marines will be deployed or where exactly they are deploying to. In June, the 24th MEU gained a special operations-capable designation, meaning its troops trained on their ability to support special operations personnel and their missions. It is the second SOC-designated MEU, following the 26th MEU, which gained the extra nomenclature in 2023.
The 26th MEU, also out of Lejeune, recently returned from an extended deployment along with the Bataan ARG to the region in support of the deterrence mission there.
"The Marines are needed for this type of mission because they are trained in various types of mission sets," a Marine Corps headquarters spokesperson said in response to Friday's announcement when asked about it by Military.com. "Amphibious warfare ships with embarked Marines are the only tool in the U.S. arsenal that can strengthen our relationships with allies and partners across all domains while being capable of rapidly transitioning to crisis or conflict."
Spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday that, while the Pentagon is "a planning organization," she would not "go into details on every type of scenario and plan that has been laid out."
On Friday, the Pentagon also announced in an emailed statement that it was "taking steps to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense" and that Austin "has also ordered the deployment of an additional fighter squadron to the Middle East, reinforcing our defensive air support capability."
However, officials would not offer any details on what units were taking part in those deployments. Singh told reporters Friday that she was "not aware that any units have been put on [prepare to deploy] orders at this time."
