It took just a day after Hamas’s devastating attack on Israel for the US to deliver a muscular display of military support for the Jewish state — and a message of warning to its regional foes.

In what US defence secretary Lloyd Austin described as steps to “bolster regional deterrence efforts”, Washington announced that it was dispatching a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean and augmenting its fighter jet squadrons across the region.

It was the first sign that US President Joe Biden’s administration was concerned that the scale of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the ferocity its retaliatory offensive on Hamas-run Gaza, had heightened the risk of a broader conflict, which, in a worst-case scenario, could draw US forces into combat.