America needs a carrier strike group to deter Hezbollah

It comes as no surprise that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah almost immediately reacted to the Israeli assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas deputy leader, in a Beirut suburb earlier this week. Israel previously had made it clear that it would target Hamas leaders wherever they were to be found, and Nasrallah responded by threatening to retaliate were Israel to attack Hamas leaders on Lebanese soil.

In the aftermath of the assassination, David Barnea, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, reiterated Israel’s determination to hunt down Hamas members involved in the terrorist group’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Nasrallah therefore had no option but to call out what he termed “flagrant Israeli aggression,” to characterize the attack as “ a major, dangerous crime about which we cannot be silent,” and to threaten a “response and punishment.”

But what Nasrallah did not say was far more important. The Hezbollah leader did not promise all-out war against the Jewish state; he did not even promise to expand his militia’s operations beyond its current levels, which involve firing a relatively limited number of missiles at northern Israeli towns and villages. Nasrallah would go no further than to assert that, were Israel to launch an attack on his forces — a step that right-wing extremists in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, and reportedly even Netanyahu himself, have advocated during the past several weeks — Hezbollah would adhere to “no ceilings” and “no rules” in responding.

Israel is not likely to launch an all-out attack on Hezbollah, however, unless Nasrallah does indeed choose to intensify his attacks on Israeli territory. Jerusalem’s operation in Gaza appears to be far from over, if Netanyahu’s assertion about the war talking several more months is to be believed. The war has imposed serious strains on the Israeli economy, given the thousands of reservists who were called to military duty. Indeed, in the past week the Israel Defense Forces began releasing two brigades, consisting of several thousand reservists, to enable them to return to their civilian workplaces. Expanding the war to Lebanon would probably require that those reservists be remobilized, further disrupting an already weakened economy.

On the other hand, though Nasrallah fears an all-out Israeli response to a more intense Hezbollah attack on Israeli targets, he might feel compelled to do so in order to demonstrate his commitment to his Iranian, Houthi and Hamas partners in the “axis of resistance.” Moreover, Nasrallah might consider the timing of an attack to be especially opportune given the departure of the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group from the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Ford strike group was meant to be America’s primary deterrent against a more intense Hezbollah attack on Israel. The task force is being replaced by the USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship accompanied by the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall. But the Bataan amphibious ready group simply does not have the same firepower of the task force that it is replacing.

The Ford is the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier. It can carry up to 90 aircraft, among them four squadrons of F-35 C and/or F/A-18 fighter/attack aircraft, as well as helicopters and a variety of support aircraft. In addition, the warships accompanying the Ford — the Thomas Hudner, the Ramage, the Carney and the Roosevelt — are all modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with sophisticated phased-array radar, enabling them to shoot down both missiles and drones.

The Bataan is a much older ship, having been commissioned more than 25 years ago. It can carry the short take-off and vertical-landing F-35 variant (F-35B), but these planes number only about a fourth of the carrier’s fighter attack aircraft. Moreover, the Bataan’s two escort ships cannot match the firepower of the destroyers in the Ford strike group. The Mesa Verde is a dock-landing ship that carries two helicopters or an Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. The other ship in the amphibious ready group, the Carter Hall, is even older than the Bataan and carries no aircraft at all. Neither ship carries the phased array radar that distinguishes the Ford’s escorts.

The Biden administration has asserted that the American deterrent remains viable even with the Ford’s departure. Since even the presence of the aircraft carrier task force did not deter Hezbollah from attacking Israel, its replacement by a smaller, older and less powerful amphibious ready group is hardly likely to dissuade Nasrallah should he choose to intensify Hezbollah’s attacks on the Jewish state.

Washington has made it clear that it seeks to prevent the spread of a wider war in the Middle East. Withdrawing the Ford strike group without an equally powerful replacement hardly serves that objective. If the Biden administration wishes to deter such a war, it should dispatch another carrier task force to the Eastern Mediterranean and do so at the earliest possible moment.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.