The Obama administration is sending more killer squads to the Middle East region already beset with war tensions. According to several media outlets, Washington has announced that it intends deploying a floating commando base, probably in the Persian Gulf, that will serve as a platform to launch teams of US Navy Seals into surrounding countries. Iran and Yemen have been mentioned in particular.

President Barack Obama has given personal priority to the use of Special Forces, such as Navy Seals, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for the assassination of suspected enemy combatants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Most of the thousands of victims of this policy have been innocent civilians, including women and children. The dispatch of hundreds more hunt-and-kill forces to the Persian Gulf will undoubtedly fuel already high tensions between Washington and Iran.

Iran has accused Washington of masterminding an assassination campaign against its nuclear scientists. The latest victim, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was killed earlier this month when his car was bombed in the Iranian capital Tehran. His death marks the fifth such Iranian personnel to be murdered in recent years.

Meanwhile, US political figures have openly urged the use of assassination teams to target citizens within Iran, with no regard to the illegality of these military extra-judicial executions or the infringement of sovereignty. Such military operations constitute state-sanctioned murder and make the US President and Commander-in-Chief a war criminal under international law – just one more count on a backlog of this same charge.

The move to bolster Washington’s killing machine in the Middle East is but the latest in a spate of violations of international law by the US, including criminal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and the use of drones and Special Forces as murder squads inside sovereign state territories. News of more clandestine operations being deployed by the US will only serve to convince more people that Washington is a rogue state that is out of control and which has lost all moral bearing.

Finian Cunningham contributed to this report