Israel has agreed to a U.S. request to postpone its ground incursion into the Gaza Strip as Washington rushes air defenses to protect its troops in the region, the Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday citing U.S. and people familiar with Israel's war planning.
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According to the report, the Pentagon is "scrambling to deploy nearly a dozen air-defense systems to the region, including for U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to protect them from missiles and rockets."
The report comes a day after a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that U.S. forces have been attacked more than a dozen times in Iraq and Syria in the past week as the Israel-Hamas war ratchets up tensions across the region.
In these attacks, one U.S. security personnel was killed, and one U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle was destroyed. Over 20 additional U.S. troops were wounded in Syria, and another 10 in Iraq, with most of them sustaining minor injuries.
The sources also indicated that Israel's ground offensive planning also considers efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and to diplomatically secure the release of the captives. However, U.S. officials stressed that the threat to U.S. forces in the region is Washington's top concern. U.S. military and other officials reportedly believe that U.S. forces will be targeted by various armed groups as soon as the ground invasion gets underway.
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Israeli military hardware and forces amass on Gaza border
(Photo: EPA/HANNIBAL HANSCHK)
Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced it was sending Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and additional Patriot air defense missile system battalions to the Middle East in response to recent attacks on U.S. troops in the region.
The United States has sent a significant amount of naval power to the Middle East in recent weeks, including two aircraft carriers, their support ships and about 2,000 Marines.
The deployments come two years after Biden's administration withdrew air defense systems from the Middle East, citing a reduction in tensions with Iran. The Patriot, considered one of the most advanced U.S. air defense systems, is usually in short supply, with allies around the world vying for it.
It also comes on the heels of a U.S. warship shooting down more than a dozen drones and four cruise missiles fired by Iranian-backed Houthis from Yemen.