US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier battle group to accelerate their journey to the Middle East as the US prepares for a possible retaliatory strike by Iran against Israel following an assassination attempt in Tehran.

The Defense Ministry announced the deployment on Sunday, August 11, after a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. He also ordered the Ohio-class guided missile submarine USS Georgia to the U.S. Central Command area of ​​operations.

The carrier battle group was already ready to depart for the Middle East, but Austin ordered it to “accelerate its transit into the Central Command area of ​​responsibility.”

The orders come on the heels of Israel’s July 31 assassination of Hamas politician Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran has vowed retaliation for the attack in its capital. In parallel with the ten-month war in Gaza against Hamas, Israel has been carrying out attacks in Lebanon against the militant Hezbollah group. In the past two weeks, Israel has killed Hamas official Samer al-Hajj in southern Lebanon and a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut. The United States and its partners in the Middle East are trying to persuade Israel and Hamas to negotiate, but the U.S. military has deployed additional troops to the region in anticipation of an Iranian attack.

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group will join the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group, which deployed to the Middle East earlier this summer to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its support ships. The USS Theodore Roosevelt was scheduled to depart the region and be replaced by the USS Abraham Lincoln, but the Pentagon announcement said the Lincoln will “complement the capabilities of the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group.”

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It is unclear how quickly the USS Abraham Lincoln can reach the Middle East. Last week it was in the Pacific, where it conducted a joint exercise with the Italian Navy’s carrier battle group Cavour, among other things. The Defense Ministry did not provide any information on how much faster the battle group’s ships could complete their transit.

The strike group is represented by Carrier Wing 9, which includes a squadron of F-35Cs from the Marine Corps and three squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets from the Navy.

Last week, about a dozen US Air Force F-22 fighter jets arrived in the Middle East to reinforce American forces there. The jets arrived from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.

The submarine USS Georgia is already in the Mediterranean and, according to the US Navy, has been training with special forces and the Force Reconnaissance Marines for about a week.

The Pentagon took part in a multinational operation in April that took out more than 300 missiles and disposable attack drones that Iran and its partners had fired at Israel. The attack was in retaliation for an Israeli attack on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria. U.S. Navy and Air Force units, as well as army troops stationed in Iraq, conducted dozens of intercepts.

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