Fears of Middle East war grow as US will deploy more fighter jets and warships in the region

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00:00It's the latest attempt by Washington just to discourage attacks on its ally Israel and afford a wider regional

00:06Escalation of the war in Gaza the Pentagon says it's bolstering its military presence in the Middle East to protect

00:13US personnel and to defend Israel with the details. Here's our Washington correspondent Fraser Jackson

00:21Well, we first got word about this

00:23Potential movements on Friday and got more details in the late hours of Friday when Sabrina Singh the spokesperson

00:30For the Pentagon said Secretary Austin has ordered adjustments to US military posture

00:35designed to improve US force protection to increase support for the defense of Israel and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to

00:43Various contingencies now that means that they are going to be putting forward a multi-pronged

00:48Approach effectively one of them is a new squadron of fighter jets heading to the area

00:53Which are mainly there to act as a deterrent

00:56the main things really that are going to be more impactful in terms of the defense of Israel are going to be the battery of

01:02Navy cruisers and destroyers that are being sent their way

01:05They have capabilities to shoot down ballistic missiles

01:09And that is going to be important because that attack from Iran on Israel in April saw

01:14300 projectiles heading towards Israel and the vast majority of which were obviously shot down

01:20So the bulking up of these will really help should this attack be larger than what we saw in April

01:26And that is something that US officials we are told are worried about that

01:31This could be a larger a more complicated strike than what we saw in April. There's also the potential for land-based

01:37Missile ballistic missile defense systems, so really things there to help beef up the Israeli

01:43I am dome

01:44Missile defense system that already isn't in place and the main thing really is the aircraft carrier strike group

01:51there was talk that the one that is currently there that the

01:54Theodore Roosevelt when it finishes its mission in a few weeks whether it would be replaced

01:58Well, we now know that it will be and that's the Abraham Lincoln carrier group will now head into that area from the East Pacific

02:05as well

02:06now that will mean that those aircraft will arrive in the next couple of days, but it will take a

02:11Considerably longer time for the ships and boats to get there

02:14Potentially a couple of weeks, of course the last time we saw an attack from Iran towards Israel

02:19It took two weeks before between what we saw as the spark of that attack to the actual attack taking place

02:25So we'll see whether it's any less time now or longer

02:28And we're also looking to see whether other other nations get involved last time France and the UK

02:34Both shot down missiles under the guise of protecting their own forces and their own

02:39Assets in the region and we're keeping an eye out to see whether that will happen this time as well

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