US reinforcements speed to Middle East amid warnings of Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel

The US military has accelerated its deployment of additional fighter jets and warships to the eastern Mediterranean as the Israeli military said it expects a large-scale attack by 15 August.

Iran has insisted that it has a right to an “appropriate and deterrent response” following the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran on 31 July. Israel has not claimed responsibility for killing Haniyeh but is widely believed to have been behind the operation.

Haniyeh’s assassination came one day after an Israeli airstrike on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital Beirut killed Fouad Shukur – a senior military commander in Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese political party and paramilitary group – as well two children and three other civilians.

Countries in the Middle East have been bracing for the potential escalation of simmering regional conflict into a broader war since the two killings.

On 9 August the US also released $3.5 billion dollars in funding allocated to Israel earlier this year that it can use to purchase US-made weapons. Those armaments won’t end up in Israel’s arsenal for months or even years. But the funding has sparked controversy amid international criticism of Israel’s now 10-month-long military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has laid waste to the territory and killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the enclave.

On 10 August, an Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza City that was sheltering around 6,000 displaced people killed at least 80. Israel said the strike was targeting members of Hamas and other militant groups. Civil defence workers in Gaza said many of those killed were women and children, and survivors described scenes of horror following the strike, which was carried out as people were gathering for morning prayer.

For more on how Israel’s military campaign has affected people in Gaza, read: