US deterrence in the Middle East has worked. So far

Sending two aircraft carriers, each with around 90 aircraft on board, plus guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, nuclear-powered submarines and a US Marine amphibious force does actually work. Since they all arrived in the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea, this superpowe presence has shown that the United States is still the dominant mi;itary power on the planet, despite superpower pretensions from China and Russia. They are not in the same league, although China is desperately trying to catch up. We could by now be in a Middle East regional war, but thanks to the US firepower sitting off the coast of Gaza, the potential participants in a wider conflict, notably Iran and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, have held back. Very wise in my view. Instead, we have had a few fairly meaningless stroppy strikes from these regional actors just to remind the US that they are around. So, some rockets from Hezbollah aimed at Israel, a handful of cruise missiles and drones from the Houthis in Yemen, and nearly six dozen drone, mortar and short-range ballistic missile Iran-backed Islamic militia attacks targeting American troops in Iraq and Syria. It sounds a lot but compared to what is happening between Hamas and Israel, it's small-fry stuff, all adequately dealt with by the US. So, so far, the big power game being played by the US in the Middle East is doing the trick.