The Pentagon has sent the Navy amphibious assault ship USS Wasp with Marines on board to the eastern Mediterranean amid rising tensions between Hezbollah and Israel along the Lebanon border, U.S. European Command confirmed Friday.
The Wasp and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit — which includes about 2,200 personnel — entered the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday “on a scheduled deployment to the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa area of operations,” the command said in a statement on Thursday.
The ship is intended to serve as a deterrent in the region and prevent the war between Israel and Hamas from becoming a wider regional conflict, EUCOM added.
Asked Friday about the ship’s movement, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh emphasized that the deployment was scheduled and that the US was not preparing any non-combat evacuation of American citizens out of Lebanon.
“The goal is not to conduct a kind of…military-assisted match,” she told reporters. “It exists to ensure regional stability and deter aggression. It has a lot of other capabilities – one of which, if there is a need for some kind of match, it can be there to help with that.”
Wasp will be joined in the eastern Mediterranean by the USS Oak Hill, which is already in the waterway, and the USS New York, which is currently operating in the Atlantic Ocean. The three ships make up Wasp’s Amphibious Ready Group, Singh said.
Amphibious Ready Groups and Marines are trained for a wide variety of missions that include evacuating U.S. citizens from war zones.
After almost nine months of exchanges of fire on the Lebanese-Israeli border, fears of an all-out conflict are growing. The animosity stems from the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, which triggered a brutal Israeli air and ground campaign in the Gaza Strip to defeat Hamas.
Both Israel and Hezbollah have recently increased their rhetoric, with an escalation of clashes and The Israeli government announced earlier this month approved a plan for a military offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the US-designated terrorist group published propaganda videos showing drone footage over Israeli military installations and communities.
The US has tried to secure a diplomatic resolution to the skirmishes but has so far been unsuccessful.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with senior Biden administration officials on Wednesday in DC, where he discussed threats from Hezbollah. But he also said that rising tensions between the US and Israel were emboldening Israel’s allies.
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