The U.S. Marine Corps is sending more than 2,000 men currently stationed in Japan to the Middle East as the joint U.S.-Israeli Operation Epic Fury continues to intensify.
The Wall Street Journal and ABC News reported the deployment shift first and Fox News subsequently confirmed it after speaking with a federal official. Fox’s Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin posted on X, “US defense official confirms to Fox News that the Pentagon is sending the USS Tripoli, a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to Mideast. The Tripoli is stationed out of Japan and would take about 2 weeks to get to the Mideast. Accompanying the ARG and the MEU are approx. 2500 US Marines.”
Before everyone loses their minds about boots on the ground, it appears that the deployment is primarily connected to air and naval capabilities, as Operation Epic Fury has been using ever since the beginning, as ABC News reported:
The 31st MEU is permanently deployed to Japan and operates in the INDO-PACOM region, but it is now being ordered to head to the Middle East.
Its deployment does not mean that the unit is going to be used as a ground force for use in Iran, but it offers land, amphibious and aviation assets that can be available to military commanders if needed.
This particular MEU also includes a squadron of F-35 fighter jets and a squadron of MV-22 tilt rotor Osprey aircraft.
Related: ‘Defeat, Destroy, Disable’ Terrorists: Trump, Hegseth Give Iran Operation Update
The terrorist Iranian regime has been killing Americans directly or through proxies for half a century, building up an extensive global terrorist network, and periodically massacring its own people who dare to rebel against harsh sharia (40,000+ in January alone). As Donald Trump put it Thursday, “They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
Trump evidently thinks the operation is going so successfully that it will be finished in the near future, as he boasted, “We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning. Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth.”
This is a developing story.
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