USS George H.W. Bush Joins Two Carriers in Middle East

The U.S. military announced on Thursday that the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush has arrived in the Indian Ocean within U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility, marking the deployment of a third American carrier to the Middle East amid a fragile ceasefire with Iran.

The Nimitz-class carrier, which left its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia, on March 31, joins the USS Gerald R. Ford in the Red Sea and the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. Each carrier operates with a strike group that includes destroyers, cruisers and support vessels, enhancing U.S. naval capabilities in the region. The Bush, measuring nearly 1,100 feet long and carrying up to 90 aircraft including F-35 fighters, traveled a circuitous route around the southern tip of Africa to avoid potential threats in the Red Sea from Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.

The deployment comes as a two-week truce holds following intense U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran that began on February 28, now entering its ninth week of conflict. President Donald Trump has extended the ceasefire indefinitely, pending progress in peace talks, while maintaining a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and vessels in the Strait of...