American defense officials are planning for the crisis in the Middle East to become even worse following a rocket black that injured several soldiers at a military base in Iraq Monday. 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced Monday night the US was deploying additional fighters, carrier strike groups, ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the region, as Israel awaits retaliation from Iran for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

‘These posture adjustments add to the broad range of capabilities the US military maintains in the region, including the USS Wasp amphibious ready group/Marine expeditionary unit operating in the eastern Mediterranean,’ a DOD spokesperson said.  Meanwhile, in Washington, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris held an all-hands meeting in the situation room to discuss a response to the attack on Ain al-Assad base. 

The base in the west of the country was targeted by two Soviet-made Katyusha rockets amid soaring tensions in the Middle East – with Iran threatening to strike Israel as early as Monday night. Biden and Harris were told by NatSec officials that it was still unclear when the retaliatory attack from Iran would come, Axios reported.  Officials told the president and vice president that they could potentially see two waves of attack, one each from Hezbollah and Iran. 

However, intelligence was not clear on who would attack first and what form it would take, calling it a ‘work in progress’. 

‘[Biden and Harris] discussed the steps we are taking to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing,’ the White House said in a statement.

Israel Katz, the Israeli Foreign Minister, has said he has it on good authority that Iran is set to attack the Jewish state, according to the New York Post.

The killing of Haniyeh came a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander from the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The rocket fire on the US base is the latest in a series of attacks targeting the base in western Iraq, which hosts American troops as well as personnel from the US-led coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group. 

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