What Message Does USS Ford Departure From the Middle East Send to Israel?

The US Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has been ordered to return back to its home port of Norfolk, Virginia, from the eastern Mediterranean amid the Gaza conflict. What lies behind the move?

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has wrapped up its mission in the eastern Mediterranean.

The carrier and its supporting strike group was dispatched in the wake of the surprise October attack on Israel by Hamas — and Tel Aviv's subsequent declaration of war against the Palestinian militant movement.

The strike group has operated in the region for over two months as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict raged on. Why has the US Navy decided to recall it?

"I think the withdrawal of the aircraft carrier USS Ford has been taken by the US administration in order to fulfil different goals," Ayman Yousef, professor of political sciences and international relations at the Arab-American University in Palestine, told Sputnik. "Number one, it is part of their national security to get it back to their homeland. There are different considerable national security, let us say, requirements there in the US, and they cannot keep it for a longer time in the eastern Mediterranean, and they have their own security obligations and security commitments at home."

"A second factor, I think it is a message to Israel to go for the de-escalation stage or the theater stage of its aggression over Gaza. As you know, Benjamin Netanyahu is not responding positively with different initiatives and different calls to stop his aggression and his war over Gaza. So that withdrawal has an implicit message to Netanyahu and to his cabinet and to Israel in general that the US cannot give it a longer time here. Their consideration is a kind of a clear transformation to a political track in the conflict," the political scientist continued.

US President Joe Biden warned the Israeli leadership in December that they were losing international support over their brutal war in Gaza which has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives. Netanyahu's government earlier defied Washington's vision of a post-war Gaza ruled by the Palestinian Authority.

Addressing a fundraiser in Washington DC on December 12, Biden called the Netanyahu cabinet "the most conservative government in Israel's history", which does not want "anything remotely approaching a two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, as quoted by the New York Times.

The Biden administration has sent repeated signals to Tel Aviv to scale down the intensity of the military campaign against Hamas, amid growing pressure from the Democratic Party constituents in the US.

A large part of Biden's electorate — including young Democrats, non-whites, Arab and Muslim Americans and progressives — support an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war.

"And then within the Middle East, the US is directly supporting this political negotiation and mediation," Yousef suggested.

He pointed out that Turkiye, Qatar, Egypt and other countries are interested in the ceasefire, adding that the withdrawal of the US forces from the eastern region sends "a clear message" to Tel Aviv that Washington's "options at this stage are political."

On top of that, the US presently has "different strategic priorities" with regard to Russia, the Ukrainian conflict, the EU and China.

"They cannot keep this a huge force in the eastern Mediterranean since they have some challenges in the Red Sea," Yousef underscored.

Meanwhile, Washington asserts to its Israeli allies that it will continue to maintain military presence in the region with the USS Dwight Eisenhower being deployed in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen to deter Houthi attacks. In addition, the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, the dock landing ship USS Carter Hall and amphibious transport dock USS Mesa Verde are presently operating in the eastern Mediterranean.

Still, the situation may become even more complicated after the US forces' encounter with Houthi vessels in the Red Sea over the weekend. Three Houthi boats were sunk by the US military, prompting Iran to step in the next day after the US-Yemeni clash. Iran's Alborz warship entered the Red Sea through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Monday, as per the nation's Tasnim news agency.