Pentagon sending additional troops to Middle East as tensions escalate

The U.S. is sending a “small number” of ground troops to the Middle East as a larger war between Israel and Hezbollah threatens to break out, the Pentagon announced Monday.

Defense Department press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters the new detachment was being sent “in light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution.”

“We are sending a small number of additional U.S. military personnel to augment our forces that are already in the region,” Ryder said, declining to offer specifics about the new contingent, though he referred to them as ground troops.

The U.S. already has an array of forces positioned in the Middle East, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group and the ballistic missile submarine USS Georgia, along with an additional squadron of F-22 fighter jets. In the eastern Mediterranean Sea, there are six U.S. warships, including the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship.

Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah are teetering toward full-scale war amid a deadly exchange of fire across the border in the past week.

Israeli forces targeted some 300 Hezbollah sites and killed at least 245 people in Lebanon on Monday, according to Lebanese health authorities, as well as wounding around 1,000 more, marking one of the deadliest days of fighting in the country in recent history.

Ahead of the strikes, Israeli officials had warned Lebanese civilians living near Hezbollah sites to evacuate.

Hezbollah fired some 130 rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa on Monday, claiming to have struck or targeted Israeli military warehouses and defense contractor sites.

The Israeli military said Monday that more than 1 million civilians were heading to bomb shelters in Haifa.

The escalation comes after intense Israeli strikes last week that killed top Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon.

Israel is also accused of detonating pager and handheld radio devices in Lebanon last week, killing at least 37 people and wounding thousands.

Israel has shifted its strategy toward the north as the Gaza war against Palestinian militant group Hamas has quieted in recent months, making it a war objective last week to return its some 60,000 displaced residents to the border with Lebanon.

Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said Monday that his country “will not stop until the threat is removed from Israel’s citizens and the residents of the north return safely to their homes.”

“We will not accept this reality and will act with full force to change it,” he wrote on the social platform X.

The U.S. has pushed for a diplomatic solution to the 11-month conflict but has struggled to de-escalate tensions and reach a cease-fire and hostage release deal in the Gaza war that the Israel and Hezbollah fight is tied to.

Ryder said Monday that tensions in the Middle East remain high, pushing for a diplomatic deal to resolve the crisis.

“It has escalated this week, clearly, and that’s concerning,” he said. “There’s the potential for these tit-for-tat operations between Israel and [Hezbollah] to escalate and to potentially spiral out of control into a wider regional war.”