United States sends 2,500 marines aboard up to three warships to the Middle East, US Officials Say

About 2,500 Marines aboard as many as three warships are heading to the Middle East from the Indo-Pacific region as Iran increases its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, two US officials said.

The shift, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as Iran’s response to nearly two weeks of aerial bombardment and long-range artillery strikes has proved more resilient than Trump administration officials anticipated.

The Marines will join more than 50,000 US troops in the region. The new deployment comes as Iran’s attacks on and near the strait have choked maritime traffic through the essential waterway, rocking the global economy. It was unclear how the new deployment would be used.

The Strait of Hormuz is a strategically important waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the northern Arabian Sea. Iran’s southern coastline runs along the strait, and military and civilian vessels transiting through are routinely questioned by Iranian authorities via maritime radio communications when entering and exiting the gulf.

About a fifth of the world’s oil transits the strait via large civilian-run oil tankers. A pause in tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz because of security concerns since the United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28 has contributed to a global spike in oil prices and higher gas prices for consumers in the United States.

Last week, President Donald Trump said he might order Navy warships to escort merchant ships through the crucial oil supply route, which US forces did for a period of time in the late 1980s during similar tensions with Iran.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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