CAIRO: The risk of an expanded Iran war grew as Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis on Saturday (Mar 28) launched their first attacks on Israel since the start of the conflict, as additional US forces reached the Middle East.
Washington has dispatched thousands of Marines to the Middle East in the month-old war. The first of two contingents arrived on Friday on an amphibious assault ship, the US military said on Saturday.
The Washington Post reported on Saturday that US officials said the Pentagon was preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, possibly involving raids by Special Operations and conventional infantry troops. Whether President Donald Trump would approve plans for deploying ground troops remained uncertain, the Post reported.
Reuters has reported the Pentagon was considering military operations that could include deploying ground troops in Iran.
LEBANESE JOURNALISTS, RESCUE WORKERS HIT
The war, launched on Feb 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran, has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the world economy with the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday the US could achieve its aims without ground troops but that it was deploying some to the region so Trump would have “maximum” flexibility to adjust strategy.
The Pentagon was also expected to deploy thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, which hosts talks from Sunday with the Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers on ways to ease regional tensions.
Israel carried out a wave of attacks on Tehran on Saturday, targeting what Israel’s military said was Iranian government infrastructure.
It also hit targets in Lebanon, resuming its war against Iran-backed Hezbollah, killing three Lebanese journalists in a strike on a media vehicle, Lebanon’s Al Manar TV reported, as well as a Lebanese soldier. A follow-up strike on the rescue workers sent to assist them also caused fatalities.
Israel’s military said it had targeted one of the journalists, accusing him of being part of a Hezbollah intelligence unit and saying he had reported on locations of Israeli soldiers.
Iran kept up attacks on Israel and several Gulf states after hitting an air base in Saudi Arabia on Friday and wounding 12 US military personnel, two of them seriously, in one of the most serious breaches of US air defences so far.
Air defences shot down a drone near the residence of the leader of the Iraqi Kurdish ruling party, Masoud Barzani, in Erbil, security sources told Reuters early on Sunday. Security sources said on Saturday that another drone attack had targeted the home of the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Israel, which regularly faced missile attacks from the Houthis before the war, confirmed a missile had been fired at it from Yemen. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
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