WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) – The United States did not move a key missile defense system from South Korea to the Middle East for the Iran war, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea said on Tuesday.
The Washington Post reported in March that the Pentagon was moving parts of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to the Middle East from South Korea, citing two officials.
The U.S.-made THAAD system is used for high-altitude interception of ballistic missiles and it was deployed in South Korea to guard against nuclear-armed North Korea.
The commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, General Xavier Brunson, was asked at a Senate committee hearing by Democratic Senator Gary Peters about South Korean concerns that moving THAAD weakened deterrence against North Korea.
“We have not moved any THAAD systems, so THAAD still remains on the peninsula currently, but we are sending munitions forward, and those are sitting right now waiting to move,” Brunson said.
“So there were previous moves, where radars were taken forward. This was in advance of Midnight Hammer,” he said referring to U.S. attacks on Iran last June.
“Some of those things have not come back yet, but the THAAD systems themselves … remain on peninsula,” he said, adding that he expected them to remain there.
“We moved them around. I think that’s what got into the information space,” Brunson said.
“I was dynamically moving those around, so that I could then sequence them into Osan Air Base to prepare them to move the munitions and that caused a big kerfuffle on the peninsula,” he said, referring to one of the two main U.S. air bases in South Korea.
After the reports of the movements in March, South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung said Seoul could deter any threats from North Korea even if Washington redeploys weapons from the peninsula.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Phil Stewart; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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