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U.S. and Israel Launch Massive Joint Military Exercise to Send a Message to Iran
(NBC News) Courtney Kube - Juniper Oak 23 is "the most significant exercise between the United States and Israel to date," a senior U.S. defense official said. Citing the focus on China and the 100,000 U.S. forces in Europe to support NATO and Ukraine, the official said, "We still have the excess capacity to be able to flex to another high priority area of responsibility and conduct an exercise on this scale." "The scale of the exercise is relevant to a whole range of scenarios, and Iran may draw certain inferences from that....It would not surprise me if Iran sees the scale and the nature of these activities and understands what the two of us are capable of doing. This is a sign that we continue to have Israel's back at a time where there's a lot of turbulence and instability across the region. If there's a sense that the Americans are distracted, or the Americans are going away from the Middle East, and therefore they have free rein for their malign activities, I think this will disabuse them."