The US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was admitted to hospital on Monday due to complications from surgery, the US Pentagon announced on Friday, at a time when the US is faced with a widening crisis in the Middle East.

Lloyd Austin was admitted to Walter Reed Military Hospital near Washington on the evening of Jan. 1 “due to complications following non-emergency surgery,” Defense Department spokesman Pat Ryder said in a press release, without specify neither the nature of the complications, nor the duration of his hospitalization.

“He is recovering well and is expected to resume all of his duties today (including yesterday Friday),” according to the text.

The Defense Department did not announce Mr. Austin’s induction earlier, and yesterday’s announcement prompted a collective backlash from reporters covering the Pentagon.

This association (it is the Pentagon Press Association) expressed its “concerns” in a letter to the Ministry of Defense, stressing that the delay in the information and the publication of the announcement “on Friday night” is a “scandal”.

“The public has a right to know when members of the US government are admitted to a hospital, when they undergo anesthesia or when their subordinates take over their duties due to surgery,” he said.

“At all times, the Under Secretary of Defense was prepared to act and use ministerial prerogatives if necessary,” according to Pat Ryder’s statement, which did not specify whether that was actually necessary.

A Pentagon spokesman later told AFP that the undersecretary, Kathleen Hicks, was “automatically authorized to assume the secretary’s obligations if he was unable” to fulfill them and indeed “made routine decisions on his (Mr. Austin’s) behalf ) this week”.

The hospitalization of general e.a. set against the backdrop of the rising tensions the US is facing in the Middle East due to the Israel/Hamas war.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels, allies of Iran, have stepped up attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea, while other armed groups in Iraq and Syria are also launching missile and drone attacks against US forces in those countries.

On Thursday, the US launched an airstrike in Baghdad, killing a senior member of a pro-Iranian Iraqi militant group that the US government said was involved in attacks on its forces inside Iraqi territory.

“The president and the secretary had already approved the operation in Iraq, the secretary was aware,” a Pentagon spokesman assured AFP.