Secretary Austin:
We only have a couple of minutes, so I won't, I won't provide an opening statement. I'll just make sure that Chris has it and he can, he can provide it to you. I know that you've all been focused on this horrific attack on Israel by Hamas. If you've seen my statements or if you’ve seen the President's statement, I will tell you that since the very beginning, I've been engaged with the Minister of Defense, Minister Gallant, on a daily basis. And my focus is to make sure that we do everything we can as quickly as we can in support of Israel as they defend their sovereign territory.
Now, they've worked hard and stabilized things a bit, they’ve secured the southern end of the country, there that Hamas had breached and now they're going to focus on the next steps.
And I'll let the Israelis speak for themselves on what those steps would be. My focus is on making sure we can do everything we can do to help contain this to the point where it doesn't spread throughout the region. And also, we do everything we can to support Israel in its efforts. And that's providing security assistance, whatever intelligence, logistics that we can find to help them out. And also to protect our people throughout the region, in the event that other things begin to happen.
So I've been on the phone just about the entire time since we took off. Sorry I didn't get back with you earlier. But I wanted to at least take a couple of your questions before we land and we only have a couple of minutes
Reporter:
Could you tell us, the Ford has arrived in the area, can you tell us what the US Military is prepared to do or would be able to do, particularly if there's any of evidence or Hezbollah or Iran or anyone else starting to get more accurate?
Secretary Austin:
Thanks. I don't want to speculate on what we will do. Again, we have the capability there. And our message is we take this very seriously. And we discourage, and you heard the President say the other day, we strongly discourage others from joining in and trying to influence this conflict. We also have the ability to rapidly deploy other resources into the region. And so will remain focused on this and will remain focused on supporting our Israeli partners.
Reporter:
Secretary, could you expand a little bit on your offer to Minister Gallant on intelligence and planning in terms of hostages? And do you have some sense of how many American hostages Hamas could be holding right now?
Secretary Austin:
We don't have any fidelity on the exact number of potential American hostages. You should know, though, that we are absolutely focused on this, and our intelligence community is working hard to gain some fidelity and as much fidelity as possible. When I spoke to Minister Gallant on Sunday, I offered our assistance, our special operators, the help our special operators, our intelligence community in planning and developing intelligence to help in this endeavor. And so I just spoke with him again about an hour ago. And we talked about this again, and that not only are we are offering to help, we have people on the ground that have a small cell, a liaison cell, that has established contact with his operators, his special operators, and we’ll continue to help with intelligence and planning as things go along.
Reporter:
Does the US have any evidence of Iranian involvement on threats, or Iranian involvement in so many of these attacks by Hamas?
Secretary Austin:
Well, we know Iran has supported Hamas over the years. But in this particular instance, we don't have any, any evidence that there was direct involvement in the planning, or the execution with this attack.
Reporter:
Just to clarify what you told Gallant today is the US Special Operators are currently now actively working with Israel in that cell, right?
Secretary Austin:
We’ve established a liaison- right. And that offer to help is there. And we're gonna help with planning and developing intelligence going forward.
Reporter:
But they accepted the offer to help?
Secretary Austin:
We're gonna help.
Staff:
And Sir, do you want to mention anything about the Ukraine Defense Contact Group?
Secretary Austin:
Yeah, well, thanks for joining us. For this next Ukraine Contact Group Meeting. You should know that we remain focused on doing everything that we can to help Ukraine be successful. And you'll hear that in our results of our meeting, here in the next day or so.
I think what you'll see is countries that are still very much committed to helping Ukraine and very much committed to working together. I think you'll hear some announcements from a number of countries and additional resources they're going to provide, even since we had our last meeting last month. So the energy in my view is still there. And I will reassure them that we are, and we remain committed to this. And you’ll hear us also announce an additional package of support going forward.
Reporter:
Has your job been complicated by the fact that the House didn't pass the extra money for your Ukraine?
Secretary Austin:
Certainly. And certainly hope to have all bodies functioning and all branches functioning. So, we hope to resolve that quickly and we also hope that we'll get our leaders confirmed so that we can make sure that all of our senior guys are in their seats. You guys, thanks again for joining us. Look forward to it.