US F-15s arrive in the Middle East as Israel prepares a retaliatory strike against Iran

Another US Air Force F-15 squadron arrived in the Middle East this week, the US military said. Washington wants to convince Israel not to launch a major counterattack in response to Iran's rocket fire against Israel on October 1st.

The F-15s arrived at an unknown base in the region on Wednesday, US Central Command said. They join additional U.S. F-16s that arrived earlier this month and bolster U.S. fighter squadrons already in the region, including sophisticated stealth F-22 Raptors. The United States also has several air tankers in the region and an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, stationed in the Gulf of Oman within striking distance of Iran and Yemen.

Several U.S. Navy destroyers are also in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, where a naval amphibious expeditionary unit stands ready in case the United States orders the evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon.

The aim of the operations is to reassure Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf region and at the same time deter Iran from launching attacks on these countries or on US troops. Pentagon officials have refused to publicly rule out U.S. military involvement in the Israeli strikes. President Joe Biden last week urged Israel to demand a “proportionate” response and not target Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities or oil facilities.

Iran fired more than 280 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1 in retaliation for Israel's killing of longtime Hamas leader Hassan Nasrallah and the deputy chief of operations of the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a wave of airstrikes in the Dahiyeh suburb south of Beirut this month .

The attacks were the latest Israeli assassination of a senior militant leader with ties to Iran to surprise the Pentagon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed a planned visit by his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to the Pentagon this week as Washington sought answers about what Israeli leaders are planning to retaliate against the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu and Biden broke nearly two months of silence in a roughly 30-minute phone call on Wednesday. The White House reading of the call made no mention of the Biden administration's previous initiative alongside France to push for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Biden “reaffirmed his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” during the call, the White House said.

The US government appeared to have abandoned its earlier calls for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon last week after Netanyahu rejected the demand during the UN General Assembly summit in New York.

Instead, U.S. officials recently said they want to work with U.S.-allied nations in the region to “create the conditions” for a ceasefire in Lebanon – in other words, to allow Israel to recognize Hezbollah as an actor in to weaken Lebanese politics. Arab diplomats have privately warned the U.S. government that interference in Lebanon's domestic political stalemate could trigger civil war in the economically broken country.

The Pentagon gave the green light to a “limited incursion” across the border with Lebanon, publicly announced by Israel's leadership, to destroy Hezbollah's military infrastructure, which the Israeli military said was targeted in an Oct. 7 militant-style attack The group had allegedly planned.

More than a million people have fled their homes across Lebanon in recent weeks due to intense Israeli bombardment. More than 2,100 people were killed and 10,000 injured, dwarfing the casualties of the 30-day war in 2006. A quarter of Lebanon's geographical territory is under evacuation orders from the Israeli military, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

“All indications we have at this time indicate that Israel is continuing to conduct limited ground operations across the border to eliminate Hezbollah’s attack infrastructure,” Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder told reporters on Thursday.

Israel's official goal remains to stop Hezbollah's rocket fire in the north to allow the safe return of about 60,000 Israeli citizens who have been displaced for about a year.

This week, Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem publicly expressed his openness to a ceasefire initiative brokered by Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mitaki. Qassem's comments marked the first time that Hezbollah publicly signaled its willingness to decouple its attacks on Israel from the ongoing war in Gaza.

“My first response to that is: Where have they been for a year? For a year, the world has called on Hezbollah to stop attacks across the border into Israel,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday.