The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group, as well as an Ohio-class submarine, have entered the Middle Eastern waters of U.S. Central Command as concerns continue about a larger conflict erupting in the region as Israel’s war with Hamas grinds on.

Ike’s arrival also comes amid continued attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria that Pentagon officials have blamed on Iran-backed proxies.

Eisenhower transited the Suez Canal and entered the Red Sea on Saturday, according to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

The Eisenhower’s presence in the region marks the first time a carrier has operated in Central Command’s area of responsibility since the end of the Afghanistan war in 2021.

“The arrival of [the Ike Carrier Strike Group] to Middle East region displays our speed and agility to flex as our nation’s leaders determined a balance of maritime capability in support of national security priorities,” Rear Adm. Marc Miguez, commander of Carrier Strike Group 2, said in a Navy news release. “The strike group brings an unparalleled combat superiority to CENTCOM and we will be leveraging our presence in the theater to enhance regional security and operate alongside our allies and partners.”

Additionally, CENTCOM issued a rare announcement on X, formerly known as Twitter, that an Ohio-class submarine entered its waters on Sunday, although it did not disclose the name of the submarine.

“The submarine’s rapid deployment in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility demonstrates flexibility and dynamic ability to deter potential adversaries, reassure partners, enhanced maritime security, and ensure freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce,” the Navy said in a news release Monday.

CENTCOM did not provide additional details, although it did include an image of a submarine appearing to transit the Suez Canal.

The U.S. has a total of 18 Ohio-class submarines, including four guided-missile submarines outfitted with 154 Tomahawk missiles.

Read more at: militarytimes.com

Is it possible that the war in the Middle East could eventually go nuclear?  If the fighting could have been limited to just Israel and Hamas, I think that there would have been a zero percent chance of Israel using nuclear weapons.  But now it appears that Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and potentially other parties are likely to get involved too, and that means that Israel will literally be fighting a war of national survival.  If it gets to a point where the Israelis think that they could potentially be overrun by their enemies, they aren’t going to leave their most powerful weapons on the shelf.

At this point, everyone knows that Israel has nukes.

According to Wikipedia, it has been estimated that Israel currently possesses somewhere between 80 and 400 warheads…

The State of Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. Estimates of Israel’s stockpile range between 80 and 400 nuclear warheads,^{[2][5][6][7][8][9]} and the country is believed to possess the ability to deliver them in several methods, including by aircraft, as submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles.^[18][19] Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967; which would make it the sixth country in the world to have developed them.^[2][20][21]

And it appears that some Israeli leaders have been thinking about potentially using this arsenal.

When asked about Hezbollah entering the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the terror group will be hit “with a force it cannot even imagine” if it does so…

Hezbollah will make “the mistake of its life” if it goes to war with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned during a visit with soldiers near the country’s northern border with Lebanon.

“If Hezbollah decides to enter the war” the IDF hit it with such strength that “it will long for the Second Lebanon War,” Netanyahu said.

It will be hit “with a force it cannot even imagine” with devastating consequences for both the terror group and Lebanon which hosts it, he said.

Other than using nukes, how could Israel produce such an outcome?

Read more at: endoftheamericandream.com

The United States Navy shot down drones and cruise missiles fired by Iranian-backed terrorists in Yemen that officials say were potentially headed toward Israel.

The USS Carney, a destroyer, was sailing in the northern Red Sea when it detected and shot down three cruise missiles and multiple drones that were launched by the Houthis in Yemen.

“We cannot say for certain what these missiles and drones were targeting, but they were launched from Yemen heading north along the Red Sea, potentially towards targets in Israel,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense.

Ryder said that the U.S. Navy’s decision to shoot down the projectiles was part of “the integrated air and missile defense architecture that we built in the Middle East and that we are prepared to utilize whenever necessary to protect our partners and our interest in this important region.”

No one was hurt or killed during the incident.

The Trump administration designated the Houthis, also known as Ansarallah, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under the leadership of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The Biden administration quickly reversed the terrorist designation after taking over in 2021.

“These designations will provide additional tools to confront terrorist activity and terrorism by Ansarallah, a deadly Iran-backed militia group in the Gulf region,” Pompeo said in a statement at the time. “The designations are intended to hold Ansarallah accountable for its terrorist acts, including cross-border attacks threatening civilian populations, infrastructure, and commercial shipping.”

Biden quickly reversed the Trump administration’s terrorist designation on the Houthis just weeks after taking office because he reportedly wanted to “mitigate one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters,” according to the Associated Press.

Read more at: dailywire.com

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made a stop in Beirut on his tour of the Middle East and promptly raised the temperature in the region, threatening to unleash Hezbollah on Israel if the IDF carries out its threatened ground assault on Gaza. Amir-Abdollahian said he met Friday with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and discussed various scenarios that could take place.

“I know about the scenarios that Hezbollah has put in place,” Amir-Abdollahian said. “Any step the resistance (Hezbollah) will take will cause a huge earthquake in the Zionist entity.”

“I want to warn the war criminals and those who support this entity before it’s too late to stop the crimes against civilians in Gaza, because it might be too late in [a] few hours,” he added.

Hezbollah has about 100,000 men under arms, but only about 15,000 are highly trained shock troops. These are the battle-scarred veterans of the Syrian civil war — the Radwan Force. The rest are cannon fodder who would be sacrificed in any war against Israel, protecting the trained fighters.

Similarly, Hezbollah’s 150,000 missiles and rockets are mostly highly inaccurate Grad rockets — the same kind of rockets Hamas fired into Israel at the start of the war. But Hezbollah also sports several hundred deadly accurate Iranian Shabab missiles and sophisticated anti-tank missiles that many Middle East experts say might be a “game changer” if Hezbollah were to go “all in” in a war against Israel.

Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas may very well have decided that this is the moment that calls for maximum effort to humble Israel. The images of hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets protesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, the dysfunction of the U.S. Congress, the age and infirmity of the U.S. president, and the distraction of the war in Ukraine have combined to — possibly — embolden Iran to let slip their Hezbollah and Hamas dogs of war.

On the other hand, Iran itself is weak and unstable. Its military is a shell of its former self with aging American equipment mixed in with some modern Russian weaponry.

Any attack by Hezbollah will almost certainly force Israel to attack Iran. And given the domestic unrest in Iran, the mullahs would be insane to provoke a war with Israel.

A more likely scenario is Hezbollah continuing to launch a few rockets at Israel, more in solidarity with Hamas than any attempt to provoke Israel into a war.

So the Iranian Foreign Minister’s meeting with both Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah and the UN envoy to the Middle East Tor Wennesland was mostly for show. And his threats were as empty as Iran’s promises.

Read more at: pjmedia.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned Israel on Friday against laying siege to Gaza in the same way that Nazi Germany besieged Leningrad, saying a ground offensive there would lead to an “absolutely unacceptable” number of civilian casualties.

Putin said Israel had been subjected to “an attack unprecedented in its cruelty” by Hamas militants, but was responding with cruel methods of its own.

He said there had been calls even in the United States for a blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on a par with “the siege of Leningrad during World War Two”.

“In my view it is unacceptable,” Putin told reporters at a summit in Kyrgyzstan. “More than 2 million people live there. Far from all of them support Hamas by the way, far from all. But all of them have to suffer, including women and children. Of course it’s hard for anyone to agree with this.”

His criticism of Israel was made all the more stinging by the reference to the 1941-44 siege of Leningrad and the implied comparison between Israel and Hitler’s Germany, with potential for causing deep offence in Israel.

Putin said, however, that Israel had the right to defend itself.

He was speaking after Israel’s military called for all civilians of Gaza City, more than 1 million people, to relocate south within 24 hours, as it massed tanks for an expected ground invasion in response to Saturday’s devastating Hamas attack.

Putin said a ground attack would lead to “serious consequences for all sides”.

“And most importantly, the civilian casualties will be absolutely unacceptable. Now the main thing is to stop the bloodshed,” he said.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in the Ukraine war that Putin launched in February 2022, which has now been raging for nearly 20 months and has included the prolonged siege of Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol and Bakhmut.

RUSSIAN MEDIATION?

Putin called for negotiations in the Middle East, saying Moscow was “ready to coordinate with all constructively minded partners”. He said the key to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Russia says it is in a position to help mediate because it has relations with Israel, the Palestinians, groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran and major Arab powers.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov held separate conversations in Moscow on Friday with the ambassadors of Israel, Lebanon and Iran, and the foreign ministry said Moscow’s contacts with Hamas would also continue.

Read more at: reuters.com

Mahmoud al-Zahar: “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.”

Footage of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar calling for world domination has resurfaced online.

“We believe in what our Prophet Muhammad said: “Allah drew the ends of the world near one another for my sake, and I have seen its eastern and western ends. The dominion of my nation would reach those ends that have been drawn near me,” Zahar said in the video that was published on MEMRI TV in December of 2022,

“The entire 510 million square kilometers of Planet Earth will come under [a system] where there is no injustice, no oppression, no Zionism, no treacherous Christianity and no killings and crimes like those being committed against the Palestinians, and against the Arabs in all the Arab countries, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other countries,” he said.

Hamas’ attacks on global citizens

Several Americans were killed by Hamas attackers, a White House National Security Council spokesperson confirmed on October 8.

An unknown number of American-Israelis, British-Israelis and a Mexican man and woman are also currently being held hostage by Hamas terrorists.

Read more at: jpost.com

In the aftermath of his organization’s decision to spark a regional war that easily could turn into a much larger conflagration, Hamas leader Khalid Mashal now is calling for a further uprising.

On Friday.

In a video posted online by the Liberty Daily, Mashal spends minutes praising the terrorists who last weekend launched a depraved attack on Israel, killing probably 1,000 innocent civilians including babies who were gruesomely decapitated.

He blames the violence on the “criminal occupation” of Israel in line with his group’s ideology that calls for, like the Iranian regime demands, the total elimination of Israel.

It was Iran that likely funded some of the costs of the barrage of attacks that now has triggered Israel into a fullscale lockdown of Gaza, and its probable destruction.

Mashal threatens: “There is an invitation on Friday. Friday. A flood to Al-Aqsa. But they do it before Friday, after Friday, and on Friday. We want to tell the Zionists, their criminal leaders, their forces, and the Americans who came to their rescue, because they have double standard, they see Ukraine’s fight as fair but they do not see the battle of the Palestinian people as just.”

Read more at: wnd.com

Taiwan has been buying weapons from the US in a $345 million defense package in response to China’s ongoing pressure

China sent navy ships and a large group of fighter jets toward Taiwan, continuing its military pressure on the island, Taiwan’s defense ministry said Thursday.

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory and has regularly sent flights toward the island in reaction to the island’s political activities. In the past year, it has also sent navy vessels as well as drones to circle the waters near the island.

Taiwan’s defense ministry said the Chinese People’s Liberation Army sent 33 warplanes and 6 navy vessels between 6 a.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday. The J-10 and J-16 fighter jets flew across the midline and to the southwest of Taiwan.

The ministry said in an earlier statement Wednesday that Taiwan’s military tracked five of the ships as they sailed in coordination with the flights of the fighter jets.

The ministry said it used land-based missile systems to track the aircraft, 10 of which crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary that had been considered a buffer between the island and mainland.

Read more at: www.foxnews.com

Overnight on Sunday, Israel reportedly carried out airstrikes in Syria, specifically targeting the capital of Damascus.

In recent months, Israel has carried out many strikes in Damascus for two reasons. Number one, Damascus International Airport is a transit point for Iranian weapons shipments heading through Syria to southern Lebanon and into the hands of Iran’s most lethal proxy, Hezbollah. Number two, a good deal of Iranian backed militias are based in and around Damascus, the home to weapons factories, which presumably produce advanced weapons that could and would be used against Israel.

So, what went down Sunday night in the Syrian capital? According to media sources in the region, Israel carried out strikes in Damascus, killing four soldiers of the Syrian army of Bashar Al Assad and also wounding several others. The Syrian regime works in tandem with Iran and Hezbollah throughout the country at these weapons factories, which were reportedly targeted last night.

Last year Israel shut down Damascus International Airport for the better part of a week because of weapons shipments coming in, many times, disguised as civilian flights.

Iran hasn’t quite gotten the memo. The more Israel has struck the Iranian regime and its assets in and around Damascus, the more it seems they continue to push. What we have here is essentially a collision course where Iran and Hezbollah say, “We are in Syria to stay,” and Israel says, “Oh, no, you don’t. This is a non-starter for us and an absolute red line,” for obvious reasons.

Iran wants to use Syria as a launching pad for attacks against Israel. They want to duplicate in Syria what they have very successfully accomplished next door in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles pointed at every inch of Israel.

Iran is working to transport precision-guided missiles (PGMs) through Syria. Those precision-guided missiles do exactly what their name says; they’re designed to hit targets with greater accuracy and greater precision. Iran is hell bent on accomplishing this and Israel is determined to stop them.

Israel, as is its MO, did not comment on the strikes. I’m sure Iran and the Assad regime are fuming, but the answer is simple: Stop building weapons to attack Israel inside of Syria, and get Iran and Hezbollah out of the country. That’s the ultimate solution, but we know that’s not going to happen without force.

There’s clearly a showdown coming in Syria. It would encompass Syria, Lebanon, and Israel going toe to toe with Iran and their various jihadist allies in those two countries. Of course, the entire ring of fire that surrounds Israel would ignite in that event, getting Gaza, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad involved, even perhaps the Houthis in Yemen further to the south. That day is coming and may be rapidly approaching as we see hostilities ramp up along the Israel-Lebanon border, and of course, in Syria.

Reas more at: harbingersdaily.com