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The Pentagon has ordered a Marine expeditionary unit with about 2,200 Marines and three Navy amphibious warships from Japan toward the Middle East, a significant new U.S. force movement amid tensions tied to the war with Iran. U.S. officials told ABC News that the deployment centers on the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, a forward-deployed force based in Japan that normally operates in the Indo-Pacific. At the center of the movement is the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group, led by USS Tripoli, an America-class amphibious assault ship. USNI News reported that the Tripoli had been operating in the Philippine Sea earlier this...

As the United States continues to strike Iran roughly 10 days since ordered by President Donald Trump, questions about how long the war may last have been coupled with the prospect of a military draft that administration officials admit remains "on the table.”Six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the war that Trump has continually defended on the backdrop of what he and other senior officials have attributed to “an imminent threat” posed by Iran towards the U.S., Israel and other Middle East nations. The potential length of this conflict has drawn many assumptions, as Trump has floated a “4-5...

President Trump told The Post Monday that he’s not ruling out sending US ground troops into Iran “if they were necessary” — adding that Operation Epic Fury was “way ahead of schedule” by taking out dozens of Tehran’s top officials. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said after launching strikes Saturday to decapitate Iran’s military and political leadership. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.'” Trump told the Daily Mail on Sunday...

War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday outlined what he described as a "clear" three-part mission against Iran, insisting the conflict "is not endless" and sharply rejecting comparisons to past U.S. wars in the Middle East. Speaking during the first Pentagon briefing since U.S.-Israeli strikes began over the weekend, Hegseth said Operation Epic Fury has a narrowly defined objective: destroy Iran’s offensive missile capabilities, cripple its navy and prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

A teacher in Washington, D.C., praised President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime because it ensures that the nation’s capital is “safe” and “secure.” Trump’s federal takeover and deployment of the National Guard has led to nearly 400 arrests since Aug. 11, Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed. In response, Elliot Reed told Fox LOCAL that Trump’s crackdown is assuring him that action is being taken to keep Washington safe. “I think it’s a good thing because it actually reinforces the fact that America is secure, safe [and] stable,” Reed said. “As a moderate, as a centrist, I think something needs to...

Following U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran’s key nuclear facilities, Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), declared, “Now Khamenei must go.” She added, “The Iranian people welcome the end of the war and seek peace and freedom.” On Sunday, Rajavi delivered a sharp rebuke of the regime, calling for sweeping change and blaming the Supreme Leader for years of costly miscalculations that have pushed the nation into crisis, driven by a now-destroyed nuclear weapons program pursued at the Iranian people’s expense. “Khamenei is responsible for an unpatriotic project that, in addition to...

A U.S. service member was killed by an improvised explosive device in northern Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon announced in a statement. The service member was killed near Ayn Issa, a town roughly 35 miles northwest of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa. The death marks the first time a U.S. service member has been killed in the country since a contingent of Special Operations forces were deployed there in October 2015 to go after the extremist group.

In significant news that has thus far either gone under or outright unreported by the media, U.S. military advisors have “boots on the ground” in Yemen, according to a recent report in the Washington Post by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Missy Ryan: “The Pentagon has placed a small number of U.S. advisors on the ground in Yemen to support Arab forces battling al-Qaeda, military officials said on Friday, signaling a new American role in that country’s multi-sided civil war. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. personnel had been in the country for about two weeks, supporting Yemeni and...

Iran reportedly has sent military advisers into Iraq and dispatched the head of its infamous Quds Force to help Baghdad strategize in its fight against Sunni militants, as the United States takes similar steps despite concern about Tehran's involvement.... Fox News confirms that Iran is flying surveillance drones over Iraq, something the U.S. also is doing. The New York Times reported that Iran, in addition, is sending tons of military equipment to the fellow Shiite-led government in Iraq and is dispatching military advisers. According to the Times, about a dozen officers from Iran's Quds Force have been sent into the...

resident Obama has decided to add 217 more U.S. troops to fight in Iraq, raising the total number now serving in the country to just over 4,000. The AP reports: Of the additional troops, most would be Army special forces, who have been used throughout the anti-Islamic State campaign to advise and assist the Iraqis. The remainder would include some trainers, security forces for the advisers, and maintenance teams for the Apaches.The decisions reflect weeks of discussions with commanders and Iraqi leaders, and a decision by President Barack Obama to increase the authorized troop level in Iraq by 217 forces...

IRBIL, Iraq — A U.S. Marine was killed near the front line with the Islamic State in northern Iraq on Saturday, becoming the second combat casualty of the war against the militants, according to the U.S. military and Iraqi officials. The Marine died when Islamic State militants fired rockets into a small U.S. base in Makhmour, a front-line town controlled by Kurdish peshmerga forces on the outskirts of the region of Kurdistan, U.S. officials said. “Several” other Marines also were injured in the rocket attack, according to a Pentagon statement. An earlier statement had not specified which branch of the...

Russia can ramp up its military presence in Syria “in hours” if need be, Vladimir Putin has said in an apparent warning to anyone considering taking advantage of his decision to withdraw forces from the country. Mr. Putin made the comments as he addressed more than 700 servicemen who have completed tours of duty in the Kremlin on Thursday afternoon. […] The comments are bound to fuel suspicions about the true nature of the Russian withdrawal in Western capitals. Despite declaring the mission over, Mr. Putin has previously made clear that substantial garrisons will remain in Syria at the Hmeymim...

President Obama’s nominee to head U.S. Central Command recently penned a memo to Defense Secretary Ash Carter demanding that the Pentagon stop discussing the operations of elite American troops. Foreign Policy, which obtained an excerpt of the memo, reported that Gen. Joseph Votel, currently the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote the December 8 memo to express concern about the Obama administration’s exposure of special operations forces’ activities. “I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote to Carter....

Today, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that 200 special operations troops are heading to Iraq. Approximately 200 special operations forces, including intelligence personnel, pilots to position them, mechanics to maintain their aircraft, a quick reaction force and other support personnel in addition to the main assault force are headed to Iraq in the next few weeks as part of the new “specialized expeditionary targeting force” according to a U.S. official. A separate senior U.S. official said that capturing senior ISIS leaders would be an important component of the new assault force’s mission to learn more about ISIS networks as...

Dozens of American special operations forces will arrive in Syria "very soon," as promised by President Barack Obama's administration, a senior official said Sunday.

EXCERPT "There will be an intensification of the strategy that we put forward but the strategy they we put forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work," Obama told reporters at a news conference at the close of a Group of 20 summit.

They already have engaged them, of course, per the otherwise successful raid to liberate an ISIS prison in Iraq last week that ended with one American soldier being killed. That sounds suspiciously like combat, and if there’s one thing Barack Obama stands for, it’s that the era of combat in Iraq is over.How can combat not be combat? Easy. Just call it something else. It wouldn’t be the first Orwellian euphemism this White House has used to reassure progressives that they may be at war but they’re not at war-war. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook had been blunter on...

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin "direct action on the ground" against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive. "We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground," Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group. Carter pointed to last week's rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages...

But the sheik’s fortunes began to decline after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Many of the Anbari fighters, known as the Sons of Iraq, were never paid by the Iraqi government, then led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. What’s more, Sheik Ahmad told me in 2012 that his contacts with the U.S. government stopped after the last troops pulled out. The sheik still publicly aligned himself with Maliki and the central government, even thought that government was failing to provide basic security in western Iraq. These failures by the Baghdad government created the conditions for the...

The White House is moving to arm Iraq’s tribal and religious militias. But these forces hate the Baghdad government almost as much as they hate ISIS. President Obama’s decision to send an additional 450 troops to Iraq is the latest example of a strategy mired in double paradox. The U.S. wants to save a unified Iraq—by strengthening the ethnic and religious militias that could tear the country apart. And to pull it off, Washington is counting on the cooperation of groups divided by a chasm of suspicion. In its announcement Wednesday, the Obama administration said the additional American troops are...