Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, declined to tell reporters during a press briefing on Monday exactly where U.S. troops are being deployed in the Middle East.
“Wouldn’t be best practice to kind of give you a full lay down right now,” she said. “But we will be ready to defend Israel if needed and, of course, to defend our forces there.”
Singh was also asked about the final cost of the temporary pier—also called the joint logistics over-the-shore—that was anchored to the coast to facilitate moving aid into the Gaza Strip.
“The initial cost that we had quoted, I think was $230 million. I don’t have an updated cost for you right now,” she said. “Some of the folks that had initially gone out on the JLOTS mission have been redeployed and have come back home.”
“JLOTS is still in the process of being redeployed, so you might remember Vice Admiral [Brad] Cooper said that the cost of JLOTS is likely to come under that number, but I don’t have the final, final for you yet as that redeployment is still ongoing,” Singh added.
Later in the press briefing, she was asked what capabilities Washington already has in place should Iran attack Israel. Singh declined to get into specifics but said that “should Israel be attacked, the president, the secretary, have committed to come to the defense of Israel and, of course, we’re postured to always protect our forces in the region as well.”
She told another reporter that Iran’s public statements are all that the Pentagon can go off of in terms of whether an attack against Israel is imminent.
“We certainly don’t want to see that. We believe that the best way for tensions to calm in the region is for the ceasefire deal to be put in place to see American hostages come home,” Singh said. “We don’t want to see a wider regional conflict and that’s why, over the course of time, I mean since Oct. 8, we have moved additional assets to the region to project a message of deterrence.”
“We still believe that a wider regional war is not imminent,” she said, “and yeah, we’ll leave it at that.”