Washington: The US military said a guided missile submarine has arrived in the Middle East.
US Central Command said on social media Sunday that an Ohio-class submarine was entering its area of responsibility. A picture posted with the announcement appeared to show the sub in the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo.
The social media post did not name the sub, but the US Navy has four Ohio-class guided missile submarines, or SSGNs, which are former ballistic missile subs converted to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles rather than nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Each SSGN can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 50% more than US guided-missile destroyers pack and almost four times what the US Navy’s newest attack subs are armed with.
Each Tomahawk can carry up to a 1,000-pound high-explosive warhead.
Meanwhile, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, an ultranationalist politician part of Netnayahu’s ruling coalition, had told Israel’s Kol Barama radio that he was not entirely satisfied with the scale of Israel’s retaliation in the Palestinian territory.
When the interviewer had asked whether the Israeli minister advocated dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone”, Eliyahu had replied: “That’s one option”.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had said that Eliyahu was suspended from government meetings “until further notice”.
