Israel anticipates direct attack from Iran; U.S. deploys more vessels to region

TEL AVIV - The United States has deployed more vessels to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, including a submarine and several destroyers, as concerns grow in the region about a potential Iranian attack on Israel.

On Monday, a U.S. official said another U.S. destroyer had moved into the eastern Mediterranean, bolstering offensive and defensive missile capabilities in the region.

The USS Laboon arrived in the area after making its way from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal, a defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The destroyers USS Roosevelt and USS Bulkeley and a three-ship amphibious task force that includes the USS Wasp, the USS Oak Hill and the USS New York are already in the region. Sailors and Marines in that task force train to handle evacuation operations and could be called upon if U.S. officials determine one is necessary.

Iran has blamed Israel for the assassination last month of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh and is promising revenge. Israel has not commented on the killing but told U.S. officials immediately afterward that it was responsible.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, an Israeli official, citing conversations with security officials, said Monday that the country’s updated assessments indicate that Iran has decided to directly attack Israel in response.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia to the Middle East and told the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to speed up its voyage to the region,

The U.S. deployment was announced by the Defense Department after talks between Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The pair discussed efforts to “deter aggression” by Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, according to a readout of the call.

Israel has communicated to Iran and Hezbollah that targeting civilian population centers would be considered a red line for Israel, which is preparing for a spectrum of scenarios, including one in which Hezbollah attacks first and is joined by Iran afterward, said Yoel Guzansky, a former official on Israel’s National Security Council who is now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Guzansky also said that Israel was considering a preemptive attack against Hezbollah, but that such a decision would be conditional on approval from the United States, which has recently established a “robust American presence in the region, coupled with an enormous U.S. pressure, not seen in recent years, on Iran to de-escalate.”

“Our readiness level is at its peak,” an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Monday, adding that Israel, along with the United States, was “following the situation around-the-clock.”

In a statement, acting Iranian foreign minister Ali Bagheri said Sunday that “Iran will make the aggressions of the … Israeli regime costly in a legitimate and firm action.” Haniyeh was killed in a guesthouse in Tehran where he was staying ahead of the inauguration of Iran’s new president, in what has been seen as a humiliating security failure.

Israeli officials fear Iran could coordinate its attack with Hezbollah, which has vowed its own retaliation for Israel’s killing last month of Fuad Shakur, a top commander. Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser, said Israel expects that Hezbollah will retaliate for the “hard hit, operationally,” the group experienced.

Amid the spiraling tensions, the United States is bolstering its presence in the region because, in the case of escalation, it “will want to be on the ground to help Israel to defend itself, to prevent damage, and then ensure that Israel does not respond,” Amidror said.

Israel is also under growing international pressure to agree to a cease-fire deal that would bring an end to the bloody war in Gaza and free Israeli hostages - in addition to calming tensions with its regional adversaries. On Thursday, Israel will send a delegation to Doha, Qatar, to discuss the U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal made public by President Joe Biden in May, the Israeli official told The Washington Post.

“Israel will be as flexible as needed,” the official said. They added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has refused to sign a deal during previous rounds of negotiations, “now understands that he needs a deal, that the country is in favor of a deal, that leaving the hostages behind would be a traumatic wound that Israel may not recover from.”

“This week, it will be possible to close a deal and bring the hostages home,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said Saturday in a social media post from the weekly hostage rally in Tel Aviv. “All the officials are saying it, the Americans are convinced of it, an absolute majority of Israeli citizens support a deal. Let’s do it.”

In one of the deadliest bombings of the 10-month conflict, an Israeli strike Saturday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians killed nearly 100 people, according to Gazan health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The Israel Defense Forces said Hamas fighters had been operating in the school in Gaza City, accusing the militant group of using civilians as human shields.

The IDF said Monday that at least 31 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad had been killed in Saturday’s strike on the school.

In their phone call Sunday night, Austin and Gallant talked about “the importance of mitigating civilian harm,” the U.S. readout said, and discussed progress toward a cease-fire deal. Gallant said Monday in a statement that he viewed the finalization of a hostage release as a matter of “urgency.”

Here’s what else to know

Hamas said it was investigating after two incidents in which guards shot hostages, including one in which a man died. Two women were also injured in the incidents, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas wrote on Telegram on Monday, adding that Israel was ultimately responsible. The Israeli military said that it did not have any intelligence “that allows us to refute or confirm” the claims, but that it was trying to verify the report. The statement did not include details about the incidents, including who the hostages were.

France, Germany and Britain issued a joint statement Monday urging Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks that would escalate tensions in the region, backing U.S., Qatari and Egyptian calls for the immediate resumption of cease-fire negotiations. In a phone call, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz appealed to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to end the “spiral of violence” in the region, the German government said Monday.

More than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza “just in the past few days,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Sunday on social media. Many of the displaced have nowhere to go with Gaza’s shelters already overflowing, he added. Over the weekend, Israeli forces re-designated part of a “humanitarian area” in southern Gaza to be a “dangerous combat zone” and ordered civilians there to evacuate.

At least 39,897 people have been killed and 92,152 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, mostly civilians, and says 330 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operation in Gaza.