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WASHINGTON: The USS Gerald R. Ford will depart for Europe next week, a Navy official said Friday, placing a third American aircraft carrier in closer proximity to the Middle East as Israel and Iran trade strikes.
Israel launched an unprecedented air campaign against Iran last week, and US President Donald Trump has said he is weighing whether to join Israel in the fight.
“The Gerald Ford carrier strike group will depart Norfolk (Virginia) the morning of June 24 for a regularly scheduled deployment to the US European Command area of responsibility,” the Navy official said.
The US Carl Vinson carrier strike group has been operating in the Middle East since earlier this year, taking part in an air campaign against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
And a US defense official has confirmed that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth ordered the Nimitz carrier strike group to the Middle East, saying it was “to sustain our defensive posture and safeguard American personnel.”
Trump said Thursday he will decide whether to join Israel’s strikes on Iran within the next two weeks, citing a chance of negotiations to end the conflict.
That deadline comes after a tense few days in which the US president publicly mulled hitting Iran and said that Tehran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was an “easy target.”
Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path toward a deal to replace the nuclear deal with Iran that he tore up in his first term in 2018, but has since backed Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military top brass.
A key issue is that the United States is the only country with the huge “bunker buster” bombs that could destroy Iran’s crucial Fordo nuclear enrichment plant.
A number of key figures in his “Make America Great Again” movement have vocally opposed US strikes on Iran, and Trump’s promise to extract the United States from its “forever wars” in the Middle East played a role in his 2016 and 2024 election wins.

JERUSALEM: At least 19 people were injured in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa as Iran fired a fresh barrage of missiles on Friday afternoon, authorities said.
Iran has been launching daily missile salvos at Israel for the past week since a wide-ranging Israeli attack on its nuclear and military facilities triggered war.
One projectile slammed into an area by the docks in Haifa on Friday afternoon where it damaged a building and blew out windows, littering the ground with rubble, AFP images showed.
Israel’s foreign ministry said it struck “next to” the Al-Jarina mosque.
The locations of missile strikes in Israel are subject to strict military censorship rules and are not always provided in detail to the public.
A spokesman for Haifa’s Rambam hospital said 19 people had been injured in the city, with one in a serious condition.
A military official said that “approximately 20 missiles were launched toward Israel” in the latest Iranian salvo.
More than 450 missiles have been fired at the country so far, along with about 400 drones, according to Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate.
The directorate added that the country’s tax authority had received over 25,000 claims linked to damage caused to buildings during the war.
Israel launched a massive wave of strikes on June 13, triggering an immediate retaliation from Tehran.
Residential areas in both countries have suffered, while Israel and Iran have traded accusations of targeting civilians.
At least 25 people have been killed in Israel by Iranian missile strikes, according to authorities.
Iran said on Sunday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 224 people, including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians. It has not updated the toll since.