Trump’s ceasefire extension buys time for new US forces headed toward Iran

(Originally published Apr. 22 in “What in the World“) As Trump offers to negotiate after extending his ceasefire, the U.S. is bolstering its forces against Iran.

The U.S. is sending a third aircraft carrier group to the Middle East: the USS George H.W. Bush is now off the coast of Madagascar, steaming north to join the USS Abraham Lincoln outside the Strait of Hormuz in the Indian Ocean and the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was reportedly leaving the Mediterranean after a nearly record-long deployment, but instead got patched up in Croatia and then sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. A fourth carrier group, led by the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer, is headed across the Pacific to join the USS Tripoli and add 2,500 U.S. Marines to the troops already in the region. Both groups are due to arrive by the end of the month.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah militia on Tuesday fired rockets and drones at Israeli forces in response to what it said were Israeli violations of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. Last Friday, Israeli forces struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, justifying the breach as a defensive move against “planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.”

North Korea is meanwhile enrolled in Iran’s combat cram school. Pyongyang has ramped up production of nuclear warheads and development of weapons to deliver them, including from the nuclear-powered submarine it is building. And on Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took his teenage daughter Kim Ju Ae to watch his military’s latest tests of the kind of cluster munitions Iran has been firing into Israel.

With only one U.S. aircraft carrier left in Asia to mind the store, China is flexing its naval muscle by dispatching a destroyer group through the Yokoate waterway in Japan’s Ryukyu island chain between Kyushu and Taiwan. That route puts China’s vessels much closer to Japan’s mainland than they usually go when crossing from the East China Sea into the Pacific, and so is being interpreted as a response to Japan’s participation for the first time in annual U.S.-Philippine military exercises. This year’s Balikatan drills involve 17,000 troops from not only Japan, the Philippines and the U.S., but also Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand.