[ad_1]
DUBAI (Reuters) – The US aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was deployed to the Gulf this week, days before the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, though the US Navy said on Saturday the deployment was not related to any specific threat.
“There were no specific threats that triggered the return of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group,” Commander Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the Bahrain-based United States Navy Fifth Fleet, said in a statement emailed after the aircraft carrier was deployed on Wednesday.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian scientist suspected by the West of planning a secret nuclear bomb program, was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday, threatening to spark a new confrontation between Iran and its enemies in the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency. .
Rebarich said the redeployment was related to a reduction of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This action ensures that we have sufficient capacity available to respond to any threat and to deter any adversary from acting against our troops during the reduction of forces,” he said.
(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Edmund Blair)
[ad_2]
