The U.S. Navy has deployed a guided-missile submarine capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk missiles to the Middle East, a spokesman said Saturday, in what appeared to be a show of force toward Iran following recent tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Navy rarely acknowledges the location or deployment of submarines. Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the 5th Fleet based in the Gulf nation of Bahrain, declined to comment on the submarine\u2019s mission or what had prompted the deployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the nuclear-powered submarine, based out of Kings Bay, Georgia, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday. \u201cIt is capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and is deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet to help ensure regional maritime security and stability,\u201d Hawkins said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 5th Fleet patrols the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil transits. Its region includes the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen and the Red Sea stretching up to the Suez Canal, the Egyptian waterway linking the Mideast to the Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S., the U.K. and Israel have\u00a0accused Iran of targeting oil tankers and commercial ships<\/strong>\u00a0in recent years, allegations denied by Tehran. The U.S. Navy has also reported\u00a0a series of tense encounters at sea<\/strong>\u00a0with Iranian forces that it said were being recklessly aggressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, the U.S. launched airstrikes<\/strong> against Iran-backed forces in Syria after a rocket attack killed a U.S. contractor and wounded seven other Americans in that country\u2019s northeast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships or submarines can hit targets up to 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles away). They were famously employed during the opening hours of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack in 2018<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S.-Iranian tensions have soared since then-President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 agreement with world powers that provided sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its nuclear activities and placing them under enhanced surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Biden administration\u2019s efforts to restore the agreement hit a wall last year. The tensions have worsened as Iran has supplied attack drones to Russian forces<\/strong>in Ukraine and as Israel and Iran have escalated their yearslong shadow war<\/strong> in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to drawing closer to Moscow, Tehran has sought improved relations with China, which brokered an agreement last month\u00a0to restore diplomatic ties<\/strong>between Iran and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. Navy has deployed a guided-missile submarine capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk missiles to the Middle East, a spokesman said Saturday, in what appeared to be a show of force toward Iran following recent tensions. The Navy rarely acknowledges the location or deployment of submarines. Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":30838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,11264,5304,5178,10391,12246,7445,4066,8484,5579,5252,6581,1759,3095,9515,10009,8029,5973,8719,10216,5254,12985,5340,10349,6666,5441,1762,3805,7348,7639,5217,5713,8160,1364,5655,12972,9818,10841,3349,7444,8122,5180,9262,6348,5251,5724,36,5509],"class_list":["post-30837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-allegations","tag-attack","tag-biden","tag-declined","tag-diplomatic","tag-drones","tag-el","tag-georgia","tag-gulf","tag-invasion","tag-iraq","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-killed","tag-kings","tag-land","tag-mediterranean","tag-middle-east","tag-mideast","tag-missile","tag-missiles","tag-moscow","tag-navy","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-persian-gulf","tag-president","tag-red-sea","tag-rocket","tag-russian","tag-sanctions","tag-saudi","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-security","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-submarine","tag-surveillance","tag-syria","tag-tehran","tag-tension","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-war","tag-weapons","tag-world","tag-yemen"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52217,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30837\/revisions\/52217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}