NEW YORK, March 20. /TASS/. The deployment of the USS Tripoli carrying Marines from Japan to the Middle East would leave a gap in Washington’s positions in the Indo-Pacific, the Pentagon’s own publication, Stars and Stripes, reported, citing experts.

According to them, moving additional forces into the region would be a constraint. Sending the unit out of the Pacific "certainly sends a negative message to US allies and partners about US commitment and focus" on the region, the newspaper quoted former director for Japan and Australia at the U.S. National Security Council Luke Collin as saying. Pulling US combat ships, aircraft, air and missile defense systems and other weapons out of the Pacific "could have more significant impacts on US deterrence," he warned.

For his part, retired Marine colonel Grant Newsham, a senior researcher with the Tokyo-based Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, expressed confidence that the USS Tripoli and its crew have what he called unique capabilities that would not be easily replaced without deploying a similar expeditionary unit into the region.

Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon last week began transferring the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying, according to varying estimates, between 2,200 and 2,500 Marines, from Japan to the Middle East. They are expected to arrive in the region in about a week. The unit could be used for seizing Iranian islands in order to reopen navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

On March 2, Major General Ebrahim Jabari of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, warned that the strait, which handles about one-fifth of global oil exports, would be closed to shipping due to the US-Israeli military operation against the Islamic Republic. On March 14, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that passage through the strait was closed only to US and Israeli ships, while other countries were choosing alternative routes "for security reasons.".