WASHINGTON: The US military’s problem-plagued mission to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza via a temporary pier has ended, a senior American officer said Wednesday.
US President Joe Biden has expressed disappointment in the performance of the pier, which has repeatedly been detached from the shore because of bad weather since its initial installation in mid-May, limiting the time it has been operational.
“The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there’s no more need to use the pier,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told journalists.
The pier was damaged by bad weather in May and had to be removed for repairs. It was then reattached on June 7, but was moved to Ashdod on June 14 to protect it from anticipated high seas — a situation that was repeated later in the month.
Distribution of aid once it reaches land has also been a problem, with the UN World Food Programme suspending deliveries of assistance that arrived via the pier last month to assess the security situation after Israel conducted a military operation nearby.
Biden announced the pier project during his State of the Union address in March as Israel held up deliveries of assistance by land, and the Pentagon has said it helped push the Israeli government to open more aid routes.
“The deployment of this pier has... helped secure Israeli commitment to opening additional crossings into northern Gaza,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists last week.
Gaza is suffering through a war that broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,794 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry.
US declares end to troubled Gaza aid pier mission
https://arab.news/ng5gx
US declares end to troubled Gaza aid pier mission
- Joe Biden has expressed disappointment in the performance of the pier, which has repeatedly been detached from the shore because of bad weather
- Vice Admiral Brad Cooper: ‘The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there’s no more need to use the pier’
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
