US, Israel to open second front in Lebanon, by M.K. Bhadrakumar

Every new front the U.S. and Israel opens in the Middle East opens an exponential level of difficulty. Two fronts are four times as hard, three will be nine times as hard, etc. From M. K. Bhadrakumar at indianpunchline.com:

A joint meeting of the US and five Arab foreign ministers took place in Amman on November 4, 2023 to discuss the Palestine question

The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of a Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict.

It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. The CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that apparently showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal Bridge. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East. 

Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable  presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea respectively, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbullah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday.

In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.”

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