Deja vu all over again: Iran takes 10 US sailors hostage
It's 1979-80 all over again. Iran has seized two US Naval boats and has taken the 10 sailors on board hostage. But it's worse than 1979-80 - the Obama administration is already blaming the sailors.
Iran detained two small Navy craft
and was holding 10 American crew members Tuesday in the Persian Gulf, U.S.
officials said, an incident that seized the attention of Congress just hours
before President Barack Obama planned to deliver his final State of the Union
address.
Defense officials scrambled to determine what
happened, saying they were looking into whether a mechanical issue caused the
incident. Officials also said one or both of the small boats may have veered
into Iranian territorial waters near Iran’s Farsi Island. The U.S. Navy had lost
contact with the two boats, U.S. officials said.
A senior administration official said the U.S.
has received assurances that the two small boats and their crew were to be
released “promptly.” The Iranians held 10 U.S. sailors, who were on board the
two craft on a trip to Bahrain from Kuwait, officials said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called his
Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, on Tuesday to try and arrange the release of
two U.S. boats, according to a second senior administration official. The second
official said the U.S. expected the American personnel to be released
soon.
The Sunni states in the Persian Gulf are extremely critical of the Iran nuclear sellout. But less because of the nuclear issue than because of the release of sanctions and the lack of restrictions on Iran's terror support. You know, the things Obama-Kerry decided were 'less important.' This is from the first link and it's from Jonathan Spyer.
“Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states can only welcome the nuclear deal,
which in itself is supposed to close the gates of evil that Iran had
opened in the region. However, the real concern is that the deal will
open other gates of evil, gates which Iran mastered knocking at for
years even while Western sanctions were still in place.”
From this perspective a particularly notable and dismaying aspect of
the deal is its removal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and
its Quds Force commander, Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani, from the list of
those subject to sanctions by the West.
The ending of sanctions on the IRGC, and more broadly the likely
imminent freeing of up to $150 billion in frozen revenue, will enable
Iran to massively increase its aid to its long list of regional clients
and proxies. Iran today is heavily engaged in at least five conflict
arenas in the region.
...
In Syria, beleaguered dictator and Iranian client Assad remains in
control in the west and south largely because of Iranian support and
assistance – up to $1b. per month, according to some estimates. For as
long as Assad remains, the war remains, allowing such monstrous entities
as Islamic State and al-Qaida to flourish.
...
In Iraq, the Iranian-supported Shi’ite militias of the Hashd
al-Shaabi are playing the key role in defending Baghdad from the advance
of Islamic State. These militias are trained and financed by the
Revolutionary Guards and organized by Soleimani and his Iraqi right-hand
man, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, also thought to be an IRGC member.
In Yemen, the Iranians are offering arms and support to the Ansar
Allah, or Houthi rebels, who are engaged in a bloody insurgency against
the government of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Among the Palestinians, Tehran operates Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a
client/proxy organization, and is in the process of rebuilding
relations with the Izzadin Kassam, the powerful military wing of Hamas.
All this costs money. In a pattern familiar to the experience of
totalitarian regimes under sanctions in the past, Iran has preferred to
safeguard monies for use in service of its regional ambitions, while
allowing its population – other than those connected to the regime – to
suffer the consequent shortages.
Still, in recent months, things weren’t going so well. Assad has been
losing ground to the Sunni rebels. Hezbollah has been hemorrhaging men
in Syria. The Shi’ite militias were holding Islamic State in Iraq but
not advancing. Saudi intervention was holding back further advances by
the Houthis in Yemen. Hamas was looking poverty-stricken and beleaguered
in its Gaza redoubt.
The sanctions, plus these many commitments, were bringing the Iranian
regime close to an economic crisis that would have confronted the
regime with the hard choice of lessening its regional interference or
facing the consequences.
No longer. The deal over the nuclear program is set to enable Tehran
to shore up its investments, providing more money and guns to all its
friends across the Middle East, who will as a result grow stronger,
bolder and more ambitious. This, from the point of view of the main
powers in the Sunni Arab world, is the key fallout (so to speak) from
the deal concluded in Vienna. IRGC “outreach” to Shi’ite minorities in
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and to the Shi’ite majority in Bahrain, is also
likely to increase as a result of the windfall.
...
Similarly, in Lebanon the West is supporting and equipping the Lebanese
Armed Forces, without understanding that the Lebanese state is largely a
shell, within which Hezbollah is the living and directing force. In
Syria, the US is pursuing a half-hearted campaign against Islamic State,
while leaving the rest of the country to its internal dynamics.
“We can expect almost every publication in the region to be clogged
up with ‘Islam is Peaceful’ opinion pieces in the wake of the massacre,”
said Middle East expert Bella Cockpit. “These are expected to last for
at least the next two weeks. The public cannot say it hasn’t been
warned.”
Sources suggested that every regional broadsheet will point out in
leader columns that “The Prophet (PBUH) was a man of peace”, “These
people don’t represent us” and “I have many Muslim friends and none of
them are extremists.”
“Pointing out the painfully obvious is expected to continue well into
next month,” said Gulf media analyst Prof. Tim Meyer. “After all, The
Prophet was a man of peace, and these people don’t represent the average
Muslim and I have many Muslim friends and none of them are extremists,”
he explained.
Meanwhile, several publications have warned that their stockpiles of
‘Islam Is A Religion Of Peace’ articles were running dangerously low.
“With five scheduled each day for the next week, our supplies almost
depleted. We need at least another 20 pieces pointing out that Islam is a
religion of peace and that these people don’t’ represent the average
Muslim to see us through,” said The Daily Gulf’s regional editor, Sam
Saltan. “The thing we all need to realise is that all of us here in the
Middle East have Muslim friends and none of them are extremists,” he
noted.
Hamas-loving Malley to join National Security Council
Robert Malley, who was forced to resign from the Obama campaign after it came to light that he was negotiating with Hamas, has been named to the National Security Council. Fortunately, it sounds like he will have very little to do with Israel, at least for now.
Now,
Mr. Malley is coming back to the White House, administration officials
said on Tuesday. This time, he will manage the fraying ties between the
United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf, a job that says a lot
about how America’s role in the Middle East has changed.
As
a senior director at the National Security Council, Mr. Malley will
help devise American policy from Saudi Arabia to Iran. It is a region on
edge, with the Saudis and their Sunni neighbors in the gulf fearful
that the United States is tilting away, after decades of close ties with
them, toward a nuclear accommodation with Shiite Iran.
With
his many contacts throughout the Arab world, Mr. Malley, who has been
program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the
International Crisis Group, would seem well suited for such a post. But
he has also been something of a lightning rod in a field that can be
culturally and ideologically treacherous.
Malley is just one link in a chain of Obama foreign policy advisers who have led Hamas to endorse Obama. And there was plenty in Malley's background
that should have tipped Obama off to the likelihood that Malley had
these kinds of links, if he had bothered to check that background.
A
little family history may be in order to understand the genesis of
Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be reluctant in exploring a
person's family background -- after all, who would want to be held
responsible for the sins of one's father? However, when close relatives
share a strong current of ideological affinity, and when a father has a
commanding persona, it behooves a researcher to inquire a bit into the
role of family in forming views. That said, Robert Malley has a very
interesting father.
His father Simon Malley was born to a Syrian family in Cairo and at an early age found his métier in political journalism. He participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World.
He wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations. In Paris, he founded the journal Afrique Asie; he and his magazine became advocates for "liberation" struggles throughout the world, particularly for the Palestinians.
Simon
Malley loathed Israel and anti-Israel activism became a crusade for
him-as an internet search would easily show. He spent countless hours
with Yasser Arafat and became a close friend of Arafat.
He was, according
to Daniel Pipes, a sympathizer of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization --- and this was when it was at the height of its terrorism
wave against the West. His efforts were so damaging to France that
President Valerie d'Estaing expelled him from the country.
Malley
has seemingly followed in his father's footsteps: he represents the
next generation of anti-Israel activism. Through his writings he has
served as a willing propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve
an agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group of Middle
East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in part) by anti-Israel
billionaire activist George Soros; and now is on the foreign policy
staff of a leading Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems
to be a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and
weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.
Now that Obama is a lame duck, he can appoint Malley to whatever position he wants.
Iranian oil workers had to jump for their lives when part of a
multi-million dollar oil platform began to sink into the Persian Gulf.
New video of last week's sinking shows the workers running along the
structure and diving into the water as the ‘jacket’ of the $40 million
rig plunges under the waves.
The rig was being installed in the
South Pars field by Iran’s POGC and the builder Iranian Marine
Industrial which is controlled by the country’s Revolutionary Guards,
says Dow Jones newswires.
Reuters reports the local Mehr news
agency saying Iran had asked for foreign help to retrieve the oil rig
from 80 meters down in the Gulf.
I'm sure the 'international community is lining up to help them.
Iran claims to have seized two Saudi fishing vessels, which it claims illegally entered its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
Commander of Bushehr Coast Guards Qalandar Lashkari said two dhows were
tracked and confiscated after their illegal entry into Iran's
territorial waters and all their 10 crew members were arrested.
He added that initial investigations showed that the vessels are
from Saudi Arabia but their captains and crews are Indian nationals.
Investigations also showed that the vessels had crossed Iranian water borders for fishing purposes.
Lashkari added that the development came a week after forces of the
second naval zone of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)
confiscated another Saudi vessel and arrested its 4 crews after they had
illegally cross Iranian borders.
He said the first vessel was later expelled from Iran's waters.
Interesting that I have not seen any comments from the Saudis on this....
A small US
commercial plane made an emergency landing in the Iranian city of Ahvaz
20 days ago after having technical problems, Mehr news agency reported
on Sunday.
"After landing, the crew traveled on to countries
around the Persian Gulf and the airplane is currently being repaired,"
the director of Iran's airports, Mahmoud Rasoulinejad, said according to
the report.
You've got to be kidding. An American plane lands in Iran, there's no report about it for three weeks, its crew is allowed to 'travel on... to countries around the Persian Gulf' and Iran is 'repairing' it - presumably so that the crew can come pick it up?
Iranian television shows images it claims are downed US drone
In an earlier post, I reported that Iran claimed to have captured a United States ScanEagle drone. I noted - with a little skepticism based on past experience - that the United States had denied that the drone was missing.
Now, I have images from Iran's al-Alam Arabic language television network. You can look at these and decide for yourselves whether the drone in the video is the one pictured above, and whether you think Iran actually has one.
Let's go to the videotape.
It looks real, but it's kind of hard to say whether they actually have it or whether that's a model. Also, you don't actually see people in the viddeo.
Hmmm.
UPDATE 10:51 PM
For the record, I showed this video to a correspondent who is a former US Naval officer. She laughed and said it looked like the video was taken at an air show, probably in Dubai.
Rear
Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC) naval forces said the drone had been intercepted after it
violated Iranian airspace, according to Sepah News, the IRGC's official
news site.
Fadavi's announcement comes exactly a year after Iran reported it's
army's electronic warfare unit had downed a US RQ-170 Sentinel drone
over the Iranian city of Kashmar, around 225km from the border with
Afghanistan.
However, a US Navy spokesman said that no US drone has been lost in the Gulf recently.
"The
US Navy has fully accounted for all unmanned air vehicles (UAV)
operating in the Middle East region. Our operations in the Gulf are
confined to internationally recognized water and air space," a spokesman
for US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain said.
"We have no record that we have lost any ScanEagles recently."
ScanEagle drones, which are small in size and have a long endurance, are used for a variety of naval operations.
Fars news agency reported that the drone was captured sometime "in the last few days." It was not clear how it was captured.
"These
kinds of aircraft are normally launched from large ships," said Ali
Fadavi, the IRGC's naval commander, according to Fars.
ScanEagle is a descendant of another Insitu UAV, SeaScan,
which was conceived of as a remote sensor for collecting weather data
as well as helping commercial fishermen locate and track schools of tuna.
ScanEagle emerged as the result of a strategic alliance between Boeing
and Insitu. The resulting technology has been successful as a portable
Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) for autonomous surveillance in the
battlefield, and has been deployed since August 2004 in the Iraq War.
ScanEagle carries a stabilized electro-optical and/or infrared camera
on a light-weight inertial stabilized turret system integrated with
communications range over 100 km, and flight endurance of 20+ hours.
ScanEagle has a 10-foot (3 m) wingspan and can fly up to 75 knots
(139 km/h), with an average cruising speed of 60 knots (111 km/h). Block
D aircraft featured a higher resolution camera, a custom-designed Mode C
transponder and a new video system. A Block D aircraft, flying at Boeing's test range in Boardman, Oregon set a type endurance record of 22 hours, 8 minutes.[2]
ScanEagle needs no airfield
for deployment. Instead, it is launched using a pneumatic launcher
patented by Insitu as the "SuperWedge" launcher. It is recovered using
the "SkyHook" retrieval system, which uses a hook on the end of the
wingtip to catch a rope hanging from a 30 to 50-foot (15 m) pole. This
is made possible by a high-quality differential GPS
units mounted on the top of the pole and UAV. The rope is attached to a
shock cord to reduce stress on the airframe imposed by the abrupt stop.
It starts: Iran fires on unarmed US drone, Obama to file lawsuit?
Iran knew something we didn't last Thursday. On Thursday morning (US time), Iran fired at a US Predator drone doing routine surveillance in international air space. Fortunately, their aim was poor.
Iran fired on an unarmed U.S. drone last week as it was hovering in international airspace, the Pentagon announced Thursday.
Spokesman George Little said the incident, which marks the first time
the Iranians have fired on a U.S. drone, occurred Nov. 1 at 4:50 a.m.
ET. He said the unarmed, unmanned drone was conducting "routine
surveillance" over the Persian Gulf when it was "intercepted" by Iran.
He said the MQ1 Predator drone, which was not hit, was not in Iranian
airspace.
According to Little, two Iranian jets fired twice, missing on both
attempts -- the drone headed away from the Iranian coast, landing safely
soon after at an undisclosed location. The Iranian jets pursued the
drone for a short period before giving up.
Little said the U.S. government has protested to the Iranians. Asked
about how the U.S. could respond, he said: "We have a wide range of
options from diplomatic to military."
He would not say whether there were actually plans for a military
response. Asked if this should be considered an act of war, Little said
he didn't want to get into "legal characterizations" of the event.
Sounds to me like Obama's going to file a lawsuit again.
Iran is considering the possibility of spilling oil in the Persian
Gulf in order to contaminate the waters of the strategically important
Strait of Hormuz, German weekly Der Spiegel
reported on Sunday. The spill would be a way of "punishing" the West
and forcing it to decrease the economic sanctions imposed against
Tehran.
Citing Western intelligence sources, Der Spiegel reported that the plan, codenamed "Murky Waters," is meant to block shipping routes in the Gulf to international oil tankers.
In addition to driving up oil prices, the resulting environmental
disaster would force Western countries to start a large-scale cleanup
operation in cooperation with Iran, which could reduce the sanctions
currently placed on the country.
The plan was developed by the
commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, and
Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, according to the report.
Der Spiegel
reported that the decision on whether or not to implement the plan was
now in the hands of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni.
It would likely be much better for the environment if the US were to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program. Anyone think this might move Obama? Don't bet on it.
Middle East falling apart and - shocka - it has nothing to do with the absence of a 'Palestinian state'
Former JPost editor Douglas Davis writes that the Middle East is about to come apart in a paroxysm of violence and hatred, and - surprise, surprise, surprise - it has absolutely nothing to do with the absence of a 'Palestinian state.'
Europe’s political and media classes are missing the point. Lazy,
ignorant or both, they persist in reading from a clapped-out,
30-year-old script – if it was accurate even then – when they declaim on
Middle East affairs. As if the "occupation", the "settlements", the
"tunnel", the "wall" and other “crisis issues” are the cause of the all
world’s ills; as if the birth of Palestine holds the key to tranquillity
and peace, perhaps even utopia.
Solve the Palestinian problem and you solve the problems of the world.
Or at least the region. Wrong then, wrong now, according to a senior
Arab political source. “Make no mistake,” he told me earnestly over
dinner last week, “We are on the brink of a catastrophe. And it has
nothing whatever to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
He added:
“The Palestinians have never been among the top-10 priorities of any
Arab government. Arab leaders don’t give a damn about the Palestinians.
They have simply used the Palestinian issue to divert attention from
their own failures – to cover up their ineptitude, inadequacies and
corruption. Their oppressive security measures were never meant to
combat ‘Zionist aggression’ but to suppress the anger of their own
people. It’s been an exercise in cynicism, pure and simple. And even
Western governments swallowed it.”
Now, he says, the Arab world – and the wider Islamic world – is facing
reality. It is a reality that has nothing to do with the Arab Spring,
democracy, freedom and liberty. Nor does it have anything to do with
rage-fuelled violence supposedly incited by the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, conspiracy theories about Western imperialism, Jewish
influence-peddling, crusader aggression, insulting cartoons or YouTube
videos (though such pretexts are often used to justify pre-ordained
spasms of violence).
“It’s true that there are sanctions against insulting the Prophet,”
notes Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle East studies at Princeton
University, “but this is really about political or symbolic opportunists
who use religious symbols to advance their own power or prestige
against other groups.”
The reality is not a contest over symbols and power. The Arab world,
which has been in decline relative to the West for 300 years, is at
bursting point (the 57 Islamic states account for some 20 per cent of
the world’s population but account for less than 7 per cent of its
output).
Today, the Middle East is standing on the edge of an internecine
eruption that is likely to sweep away the existing order and radically
alter the regional order, with far-reaching strategic implications for
the West.
The region is splitting apart and ready to explode out of its largely
artificial boundaries along two major fault lines, ethnic and religious.
Read the whole thing, because he's got it right. And what's worse is that if Obama is reelected, the United States - which is the only power that might be able to do something about it - will have it wrong at just the wrong time.
The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region, in part to reassure Israel that in dealing with Iran, as one senior administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”
But at a moment that the United States and its allies are beginning to enforce a much broader embargo on Iran’s oil exports, meant to force the country to take seriously the negotiations over sharply limiting its nuclear program, the buildup carries significant risks, including that Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps could decide to lash out against the increased presence.
The most visible elements of this buildup are Navy ships designed to vastly enhance the ability to patrol the Strait of Hormuz — and to reopen the narrow waterway should Iran attempt to mine it to prevent Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters from sending their tankers through the vital passage.
The Navy has doubled the number of minesweepers assigned to the region, to eight vessels, in what military officers describe as a purely defensive move.
“The message to Iran is, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ ” one senior Defense Department official said. “Don’t even think about closing the strait. We’ll clear the mines. Don’t even think about sending your fast boats out to harass our vessels or commercial shipping. We’ll put them on the bottom of the gulf.” Like others interviewed, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the diplomatic and military situation.
In the meantime, Iran is considering legislation that would require its navy to stop oil shipments to countries that boycott Iranian oil.
Responding to the tightening of Western sanctions, Iran on Monday announced that it would consider proposed legislation to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz as well as missile tests, in a drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.
The Iranian legislation calls for Iran’s military to block any oil tanker en route to countries no longer buying Iranian crude because of the embargo. It was unclear whether the legislation would pass or precisely how Iran would enforce it.
Senior Pentagon and military officials acknowledge that Iran has the capability to close the strait, at least temporarily, and the additional mine-clearing forces can be viewed as both concrete and spoken evidence of Washington’s commitment to make sure any closing is as brief as possible.
If anyone still needs proof of why Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, imagine Iran threatening any country that buys oil from another supplier instead of from Iran.
Obama vetoed deployment of third US aircraft carrier to Arabian Gulf
Eli Lake reports exclusively for the Daily Beast that President Obama turned down a request earlier this year from General James Mattis to deploy a third aircraft carrier in the PersianArabian Gulf. Mattis is the commander of Centcom, the United States' central command.
Mattis wanted to send a third aircraft-carrier group to the Persian Gulf earlier this year, The Daily Beast has exclusively learned, in what would have been a massive show of force at a time when Iranian military commanders were publicly threatening to sink American ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The four-star Marine Corps general and CentCom commander believed the display could have deterred Iran from further escalating tensions, according to U.S. military officials familiar with his thinking.
But the president wanted to focus military resources on new priorities like China, and Mattis was told a third carrier group was not available to be deployed to the Gulf.
The carrier-group rebuff in January was one of several for the commander responsible for East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Working for the Obama administration, Mattis has often found himself the odd man out—particularly when it comes to Iran.
Military sources close to the general tell The Beast that Mattis was worried that the president’s decision, announced in November, to fully withdraw from Iraq would leave the U.S. military without access to the country’s bases and with few options to project power in the region. The military had been negotiating with the Iraqi government for continued access to bases there for some intelligence, training, and counterterrorism missions until Obama announced his decision to the press in November.
Obama has no intention of stopping Iran. None whatsoever.
Iran issued some more threats to shut the Persian Arabian Gulf after SWIFT blocked Iran from using its bank clearing system. As a result, the United States is doubling its minesweepers in the area to ensure that the Gulf stays open.
The United States is sending four minesweeping ships and four minesweeping helicopters to augment its naval forces in the Persian Gulf, the US Navy's top officer told a US Senate committee on Thursday.
"We are moving four more minesweepers to the region, making eight," Adm. Jonathan Greenert said in the Senate Armed Services Committee, declining to say when the deployment would take place.
If the source for this story were not the commander of the US Navy's 5th fleet, Vice Admiral Mark Fox, I might dismiss it as pure hysteria. But Fox, who is based in Bahrain, told reporters on Sunday that Iran has suicide boats ready to go.
"They have increased the number of submarines ... they increased the number of fast attack craft," Vice Admiral Mark Fox told reporters. "Some of the small boats have been outfitted with a large warhead that could be used as a suicide explosive device. The Iranians have a large mine inventory."
"We have watched with interest their development of long range rockets and short, medium and long range ballistic missiles and of course ... the development of their nuclear program," Fox, who heads the US Fifth Fleet, said at a briefing on the fleet's base in the Gulf state of Bahrain.
Iran now has 10 small submarines, he said.
I know. You're all looking at this and thinking "you've got to be kidding. They're going to send a little motorboat to bounce off the side of an aircraft carrier?" Well, not exactly.
Military experts say the US Navy's Fifth Fleet patrolling the Gulf - which always has at least one giant supercarrier accompanied by scores of jets and a fleet of frigates and destroyers - is overwhelmingly more powerful than Iran's navy.
But ever since al Qaida suicide bombers in a small boat killed 17 sailors on board the destroyer USS Cole in a port in Yemen in 1996, Washington has been wary of the vulnerability of its huge battleships to bomb attacks by small enemy craft.
Asked whether the US Navy was prepared for an attack or other trouble in the Gulf, Fox said: "We are very vigilant, we have built a wide range of options to give the president and we are ready... What if it happened tonight? We are ready today."
What's significant about this is that it's the first time that you hear an American (as opposed to Israeli or Iranian) commander talking about his forces' capabilities. It's ratcheting up the rhetoric, and somehow, I don't believe it's empty.
Remember my old friend Inspector Tamim, the police chief of Dubai? Well, he's gotten it right this time. The inspector says that US policy is the number one threat to the Gulf States; the US is not an ally.
Rumor has it that President Obumbler started crying when he heard this.
In a January 19, 2012 address at the GCC national and regional security conference in Bahrain, Dubai's longtime chief of police Dahi Khalfan Tamim gave an assessment of security threats to the Gulf states. He said that the U.S. was the main security threat, had realized Iran's dreams in Iraq, was "embracing" the Muslim Brotherhood, and was no longer an ally. His remarks prompted U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain Thomas Krajeski, who was attending the conference, to walk out.
The day following the address, he defended his statements, saying, "The U.S. has granted Iran many of its dreams in the region, including the toppling of Saddam [Hussein], active presence of Iran in Iraq and the exporting of the revolution into the Arab world." He added, "I was not solely targeting the U.S. policies but was giving my reading to the security threats to the Gulf, and they included several factors. I talked about corruption and abuse of power, especially in law enforcement apparatus, on Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood as well."
Iran doesn’t have the military capability to close the strait. About three years after the 1988 battle with the Iranians, the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, while patrolling the Arabian Gulf, launched F-14, F-18 and E-2 aircraft day and night.
The Nimitz was cruising at a speed of 2 knots (3.7 kilometers per hour). So, if the Nimitz can launch planes at this speed, this means it can cruise for three straight hours crossing the Strait of Hormuz six-mile navigation channel in perpendicular fashion and not worry about any maneuver. The Iranians knew about what the USS Nimitz can do. The Iranians later on decided to use a safer approach to defend the Iranian shores. They installed Silkworm Anti-Ship Missiles. But, later on they realized they can’t protect these missiles. They remembered what happened to the Syrians when they had their missiles in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon without air superiority.
The Iranians don’t have the sophisticated torpedoes, sophisticated surface to air missiles and they don’t have any airborne radar (AWACS) capability. As for their outdated diesel submarine, the Iranians are not well trained for sophisticated under-water operations and their submarines have a very limited underwater capabilities. And the weakest Iranian military point is that they don’t have an air force. The F-14 (Tomcat) and F-4 (Phantom), the Iranian high-tech planes are very old and their radar system, like the F-14’s AWG9 radar is not working because of lack of maintenance, spare parts and age. Their pilots are always operating in the dark because they have no command and control. The only strength the Iranian have is the land forces. They could mass hundreds of thousands of soldiers. But, these forces will be useless for sea battles. And these land forces have no air support.
Those of us who grew up in the 1960's remember ads like the one above from comic books. On Tuesday, Iran is acting like the bully, kicking sand in the United States' face with a demand that the USS John Stennis not return to its Persian Gulf base. And unfortunately, the current occupant of the White House is the 98-pound weakling.
Iran's army chief told the United States that a US aircraft carrier which left the area because of Iranian naval exercises should not return to the Gulf, the state news agency reported on Tuesday.
"Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy’s carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf," Ataollah Salehi told IRNA.
"I advise, recommend and warn them (the Americans) over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Salehi as saying.
Salehi did not name the aircraft carrier or give details of the action Iran might take if it returned.
Also on Tuesday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Vadim Koval told the Interfax news source that Russia doesn't believe Iran has long-range missiles. According to Koval, Iran does not possess the necessary technology to create these weapons in the near future and has so far only tested short and medium range missiles.
The statement came after Iranian state TV's website quoted on Monday a senior navy commander saying that the Islamic Republic test fired two long-range missiles during a 10-day naval exercise in the Gulf. Iran said that it is was using the test display its resolve to counter any attack by enemies such as Israel or the United States.
"We have test fired a long-range shore-to-sea missile called Qader (capable), which managed to successfully destroy predetermined targets in the Gulf," deputy Navy Commander Mahmoud Mousavi told the official news agency IRNA. Later Monday, Mousavi added that "our Nour surface-to-surface long range missile was also successfully launched."
Yeah right.
The real question is why the Stennis got out of the way of those exercises in the first place. Who gave that order? Obviously, the coward who sits in the White House.
Iran to hold 10-day Naval exercise in Persian Gulf
Iran will hold a 10-day Naval exercise in the Persian Gulf beginning Saturday in what is apparently an attempt to put on a show of force.
Admiral Amir-Habibollah Sayari said that the exercise, dubbed "Velayat-90," would be launched on Saturday and will span a 1,250-mile (2,000-kilometer) stretch of sea off the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula and into the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea.
"The maneuvers will be carried out with the intention of displaying the determination, defensive and deterrent power of the Iranian armed forces as well as relaying a message of peace and friendship in the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman and the free waters of the Indian Ocean," Sayari said.
Somehow, the 'peace and friendship' part seems likely to be lost in the shuffle. I'm sure Oman and the Saudis will be thrilled about this.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
