The U.S. military is surging munitions and equipment to Israel and voicing unequivocal support for the country’s military, saying the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians amounted to nothing less than “ISIS-level savagery.”
The statement by a senior U.S. defense official echoed comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also likened Hamas to the Islamic State terror group, which gained notoriety for publicizing its vicious treatment of prisoners and hostages, often posting videos of beheadings and other executions on social media.
“I think there’s been an instinct to see this as the same kind of tensions or conflicts that we’ve seen between Palestinians and Israelis,” said the official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon. “This is different.”
“Hamas militants going across Israel, murdering children in front of their parents, massacring with indiscriminate violence [at] music festivals, burning down entire houses while families sheltered in their bunkers. … It’s unprecedented,” the official said.
“We back Israel and its right to respond to ensure that its own citizens and its territory are safe from Hamas terror and recognize that there’s going to need to be a response for Israel to restore deterrence,” the official added.
Already, the U.S. has ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the eastern Mediterranean, which includes the U.S. Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, a guided missile cruiser and five guided missile destroyers.
The official said the ships were set to arrive “very soon” and would begin carrying out maritime and air operations to reassure allies and to deter actors such as Iran and its various proxies, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, from trying to exploit or escalate the conflict.
The strike group “can conduct a full spectrum of missions from intelligence collection, maritime dominance, to long-range strike,” the official said. “[It] will ensure the United States is postured to respond to any contingencies.”
Yet despite concern about the potential threat from Iran and its proxies, the senior defense official repeated statements by other top-level U.S. officials that Washington does not have any evidence yet to directly connect Iran to the Hamas plot.
But the senior official said that does not mean the U.S. is underestimating the threat from Tehran.
“Of course, Iran is in the picture,” the official said. “We’ve been very clear for years that Iranian support to a variety of militia groups, the sophistication of weapons it’s providing, has been increasing.”
For now, the U.S. military is focused on getting Israel what it needs for the fight against Hamas.
Pentagon officials also said planes loaded with air defense capabilities, munitions and other equipment are already enroute to Israel, with more deliveries likely on the way.
Additionally, U.S. military officials have reached out to private defense companies, urging them to speed the delivery of existing Israeli military orders.
“For every request that our Israeli counterparts have made of us, we are able to meet those requests,” the senior defense official told reporters, adding that the Pentagon does not anticipate that surging support for Israel will have any impact on Washington’s ability to simultaneously support Ukraine in its fight against Russia or on the U.S. ability to respond to other contingencies.
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