WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has announced that it will deploy air, sea and land assets as a “necessary measure” by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro reports.

According to Zhou-Castro, the deployment includes sending the USS Abraham Lincoln battleship to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt — the aircraft carrier with some 40 fighter jets, which has been moving from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, which is towards Israel.

The US will also be sending more ballistic missile defence-capable cruisers and destroyers to the region and an additional fighter jet squadron to the Middle East, she reports.

All of this, the Pentagon says, is to increase readiness in case there is an Iranian, or Iranian-proxy retaliatory attack on Israel, Zhou-Castro says.

In addition, they are considering more land-based ballistic missile defence systems, and sending more US troops to the region to operate these assets.

This development came after an earlier phone call between Austin and his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in which Austin again reiterated to Gallant that the US has an ‘ironclad’ commitment to Israel’s defence, Zhou-Castro reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said an Israeli delegation will travel to Cairo in the coming days for negotiations to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, Reuters reports.