by Shlomo Cesana, Lilach Shoval, Mati Tuchfeld and Reuters
U.S. moves nuclear powered aircraft carrier to Red Sea to help support strike, if needed • Russia is sending a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranean • Israel sends reserves units home, dials back missile defenses • Netanyahu: It's not over yet.
The USS Nimitz is heading
toward the Red Sea to help support an American strike on Syria, if
needed
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Photo credit: Reuters  |
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS
Nimitz and other ships in its strike group are heading west toward the
Red Sea to help support a limited U.S. strike on Syria, if needed,
defense officials said on Sunday.
Russia, meanwhile, is sending a reconnaissance
ship to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Interfax news agency reported on
Monday. The reconnaissance ship Priazovye left Russia's naval base in
the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol late on Sunday on a mission
"to gather current information in the area of the escalating conflict,"
the report quoted an unidentified military source as saying.
Interfax said the Priazovye would be operating
separately from a navy unit permanently stationed in the Mediterranean
in a deployment which President Vladimir Putin said is needed to protect
national security interests.
The Defense Ministry said last week that new
warships would be sent to the Mediterranean to replace others in a
long-planned rotation of the ships based there.
The U.S. Navy's Nimitz carrier strike group,
which includes four destroyers and a cruiser, has no specific orders to
move to the eastern Mediterranean at this point, but is moving west in
the Arabian Sea so it can do so if asked.
"It's about leveraging the assets to have them
in place should the capabilities of the carrier strike group and the
presence be needed," said the official.
"We try to reduce the physics of time and
space so we can be as ready as possible should we be needed," said a
second official, cautioning that decisions about ship positioning in the
Mediterranean were still being finalized.
U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday
delayed imminent cruise missile strikes by five destroyers off the coast
of Syria until Congress had time to vote on the issue, effectively
putting any military action on hold for at least nine days.
The U.S. Navy doubled its presence in the
eastern Mediterranean over the past week, as the Sixth Fleet deployed
the USS Barry, USS Mahan, USS Ramage, USS Gravely and the USS Stout to
Mediterranean waters.
The destroyers are carrying a combined load of
about 200 Tomahawk missiles, but officials say a limited strike on
Syria could be accomplished with half that number.
The Nimitz carrier group had been in the
Indian Ocean supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan but was due to
sail east around Asia to return to its home port in Everett, Washington,
after being relieved in recent days by another aircraft carrier, the
USS Harry S. Truman.
Given the situation in Syria, U.S. military
officials decided to reroute the Nimitz and send it west toward the Red
Sea, and possibly the Mediterranean, officials said.
As the U.S. continues to prepare for a
possible strike, Israeli authorities began dialing down the preparations
for possible fallout on Sunday, sending home some of the reserves units
that were called up in preparation for a flare up. The alert levels
involving Iron Dome, Patriot and Arrow anti-missile defense systems
deployed across the country were also scaled back.
Iran is drawing conclusions
Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting on
Sunday, however, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his ministers
that "we are in the midst of an ongoing event. It is not over. We are
dealing with sensitive and delicate issues."
"We are handling the ever-changing situation
responsibly and with much consideration. There is no room for personal
remarks. We are handling things in a responsible, meticulous centralized
fashion, as a responsible government should," Netanyahu said, stressing
the importance of maintaining silence and refraining from making any
"irresponsible" remarks to the press.
But Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman
spoke out on the latest events on Sunday, saying at a party holiday
event that "100,000 people were massacred in a neighboring country, in
Syria, and the world is still just talking. The other part of the world
is approaching these events just as a means of intensifying terror and
bloodshed. The Iranians are taking full advantage of the situation, as
it is unfolding, and pushing ahead with their nuclear program."
Dan Gillerman, Israel's former ambassador to the U.N.,
said that Obama's policy was painting the U.S. as "weak, indecisive, and
losing its grip on regional power. This decision is a terrible display
of weakness, sending a message to the enemies of the U.S. that they have
no one to fear, and to the U.S.'s allies that they have no one to count
on. There is no doubt that the Iranians are getting the message and
drawing their own conclusions."
Shlomo Cesana, Lilach Shoval, Mati Tuchfeld and Reuters
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=11737
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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