The US Air Force on Thursday launched the second short-term deployment of B-52 heavy bombers to the Middle East in less than a month as part of efforts to deter potential hostile Iranian military activity as Washington reduces its military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The flight by two B-52 Stratofortress crews from Louisiana to the Levant comes less than two weeks after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for retaliation for the assassination of a senior Iranian nuclear scientist in an attack officials in Tehran have blamed on Israel. The deployment also comes just shy of a year since the United States assassinated Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.
