US sends 9,000 troops and third carrier toward Iran as tanker struck in Hormuz
The Pentagon is dispatching roughly 9,000 troops aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group and an amphibious group as President Trump weighs new strikes on Iran, while a tanker was hit by an "unknown projectile" in the Strait of Hormuz.
The US military is dispatching roughly 9,000 troops to the Middle East, a US official said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump warned anew that new strikes against Iran could be on the horizon.
The force includes the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, deployed with the cruiser USS Chosin, and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group, including the landing ships USS John P. Murtha and USS Anchorage.
They join the carriers USS George H.W. Bush and USS George Washington and the USS Boxer amphibious group already in the region — more than 20,000 sailors and Marines and hundreds of aircraft in all, with three carriers possible by late October. The Navy last had three carrier strike groups in the Middle East in April, for the first time since 2003.
At the White House, Trump said early indications suggested Iran was linked to the co-pilot who stabbed his captain and tried to crash an Israel-bound flight on Wednesday: “Oh they’ll be hit, very hard, don’t worry.”
Separately on Thursday, a tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz was hit by an “unknown projectile”, “resulting in a fire,” UKMTO said. The crew were reported safe; damage, flag, route and cargo were undisclosed. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency, citing local sources, claimed a 2.5-million-barrel-capacity supertanker was hit about 8 km off the Omani coast on an “unauthorized route”. No US strikes on Iranian targets have taken place since September 1.
UKMTO logged the latest incident at 1750 GMT on Thursday.
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