Iranians to Station Warships off US Coasts in Int. Waters

[dennislmay]

Last night on Special Report on FOX News they reported that Iran plans to station warships off US coasts in international waters starting next year.

It will be interesting to see how people will feel about them having nuclear weapons and long range missiles when they are just minutes off the coast of NYC and Washington DC.

Dennis

[Brant Gaede]

Last night on Special Report on FOX News they reported that Iran plans to station warships off US coasts in international waters starting next year.

It will be interesting to see how people will feel about them having nuclear weapons and long range missiles when they are just minutes off the coast of NYC and Washington DC.

Dennis

Sounds like disinformation. Regardless, the U.S. considers the export of oil from the Persian Gulf to be vital and Iran's threat to that there to be next to a war threat. Iranian warships off its coasts would be an add-on threat. Recreational drug importers get no protection from international waters nor did the Soviets trying to maintain nuclear weapons and delivery systems in Cuba fifty years ago.

--Brant

media are beating the war drums

[dennislmay]

media are beating the war drums

So repeating what the Iranians say they are going to do is beating the war drums?

It sounds to me like the Iranians will soon be in a position to dictate terms in the Gulf - similar

to fear of the Germans in the 30s. Nuclear weapons sitting off the coast are a game changer.

Dennis

[jts]

Watch for a psyop shortly before the next USA election that will be blamed on Iran and will be used as an excuse to begin the war against Iran.

[dennislmay]

Watch for a psyop shortly before the next USA election that will be blamed on Iran and will be used as an excuse to begin the war against Iran.

No "psyops" conspiracy is required - the Iranians have let their intentions be openly known for a very long time. Knee jerk reactions to blame the US or Israel when the threat is obvious, clear, and announced well in advance signals a blame America first mindset - not military reality. "Officer those nasty Americans forced that old growth oak tree out in front of me - it just came out of nowhere."

Dennis

[jts]

Watch for a psyop shortly before the next USA election that will be blamed on Iran and will be used as an excuse to begin the war against Iran.

No "psyops" conspiracy is required - the Iranians have let their intentions be openly known for a very long time.

I listened to several interviews with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prez of Iran. He seemed to have no hostile intention against the USA. Beware of spin from mainstream news sources.

[dennislmay]

Watch for a psyop shortly before the next USA election that will be blamed on Iran and will be used as an excuse to begin the war against Iran.

No "psyops" conspiracy is required - the Iranians have let their intentions be openly known for a very long time.

I listened to several interviews with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prez of Iran. He seemed to have no hostile intention against the USA. Beware of spin from mainstream news sources.

Beware of spin from Islamo-Fascists with terrorist backgrounds.

Dennis

[william.scherk]

I won't post any Persian-language reports, but using GoogleTranslate, OLers can gain a taste for the Iranian media presentation. Though a fiendish news junkie, I haven't yet seen the frothing hysteria on the major networks or cable that we find on fringe commentary sites such as Above Top Secret or Debkafile.

As for drums beating for war, the drums have been pounding in the background for some time, in Tel Aviv and Washington. The drummers hardly need an extra boost from Fox and friends. Iran is an enemy nation to the USA, and the USA is an enemy nation to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Each is on a pre-war footing with the other, and each has covert intelligence operations deep inside the other.

I think it is both a provocation and a partly-rational action on the part of the Iranians.

It is an Iranian provocation of deep significance for some (cue Dennis May with the rumbling contextual certainty that Iran is not only possessive of nuclear bombs, but also has means to launch them from America's shores), and it is a smart move for Iran for some others (notably the Iranians themselves in their delusions). It is an unmistakable provocation if you think no country like Iran has the right to chug its warships around in international waters.

For other audiences, like the Persian world at home and abroad, the Arab world, the kind of folks who follow Iran as a beacon of right-behaviour or the most dangerous foe, it will need a day or two to see the full range of reaction. That is when you consult Ha'aretz instead of Debkafile, Al Ahram instead of Alex Jones, and hear the waffly or belligerent response from the White House, and further frothing news cycles.

But hey, I am cynical. The audience for this announcement is the Middle East foremost -- and folks in the neighbourhood have witnessed butt-loads of chestbeating, boasts and threats from Tehran, I think. In terms of actual military threat it is like the coast guard being threatened by snorkeling vacationers, not commandos storming a beach, not missiles banged in from the Grand Banks.

To rise above the thrumming background thump already sounding, real drums of war would pound out the message that America will fight! Iran. Fight! Send ships out their to harass and harry the evil vacationers with their nuclear slingshots. We need shots fired!

Here is how the Iranian external media organ PressTV presents the plan for exercises:

'Iran to deploy vessels near US waters'

The Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says the Navy plans to deploy vessels in the Atlantic Ocean near the US sea borders.

“Just like the global hegemony that is present near our marine borders, we … also plan to establish a strong presence near US marine borders,” IRNA quoted Sayyari as saying on Tuesday.

The US has deployed several fleets in the Persian Gulf.

He said that the deployment of Iranian naval fleets in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea as well as the presence of its submarines in the Red Sea marked an honor for the Iranian nation and other Muslim countries.

He said that Iran's Navy planned to have a strong presence in international waters.

This comes as Iran plans to dispatch its 16th fleet of warships to the Gulf of Aden as part of efforts to provide security for Iranian vessels and oil tankers in the piracy-infested area.

In line with international efforts against piracy, the Iranian Navy has been conducting anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since November 2008 in order to safeguard merchant containers and oil tankers owned or leased by Iran or other countries.

The Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, is a strategic energy corridor, particularly because the Persian Gulf oil is shipped to the West via the Suez Canal.

Despite international patrols, Somali pirates have hijacked dozens of ships in recent years and have taken in tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

I may be entirely wrong in my cynical estimation of the aim of the Iranian sea trip. My take on the provocation may be off-base. It would be interesting to hear from others here on the question; what is the provocation designed to do?

Probably, if a kerfuffle erupts over the vacationers/commandos in your country, some dumb lefty appeaser will say that Iran was making a moral point. If the USA has the right to lodge its fleet some 40 miles from Iran, and to pass its vast maritime might in international waters bordering Iran, then it is a corollary right to cruise the watery borders of America.

Perhaps the cruise of the mighty Iranians out past the Grand Bank will be page one when it happens, but the gravity of the cruise, its meaning and its weight, will only become evident as the reaction accrues - we will build up to the event in grave expectancy, or we will turn away from it in favour of Kim Kardashian.

I find wars begin just after a moment of equipoise is breached violently, after thorough planning and readiness for active engagement, when things reach and exceed a certain balance, when the equation shifts and unleashes the physics of aggression.

So what would be at balance off the Grand Banks to trouble the equipoise of cold peace? I say not very much at all. Right now, and until the US election, the only real bloody daily toll of death is taken in Syria. That irregular drumming sound you hear may be a barrel-bomb dropped on Aleppo from a helicopter, or a shell lobbed into Homs for the 89th straight day. The Iranian naval posturing pales in comparison to 25,000 dead.

Edited September 5, 2012 by william.scherk

[jts]

I listened to several interviews with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prez of Iran. He seemed to have no hostile intention against the USA. Beware of spin from mainstream news sources.

Beware of spin from Islamo-Fascists with terrorist backgrounds.

Dennis

Did you listen to the interviews? I prefer to get what he said from the man himself (or as close to that as possible via a translator) instead of some other source saying in different words what he said. It's not that hard to find out what he said. He is on youtube. One of the good things about the internet is it can expose lies. Even internet lies.

[BaalChatzaf]

Last night on Special Report on FOX News they reported that Iran plans to station warships off US coasts in international waters starting next year.

It will be interesting to see how people will feel about them having nuclear weapons and long range missiles when they are just minutes off the coast of NYC and Washington DC.

Dennis

As long as they are on the High Seas we have not a thing to say about it. We station war ships off their waters.

I am not too worried about Iranian ships. It is their flying carpets that worry me.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

Right now, and until the US election, the only real bloody daily toll of death is taken in Syria. That irregular drumming sound you hear may be a barrel-bomb dropped on Aleppo from a helicopter, or a shell lobbed into Homs for the 89th straight day. The Iranian naval posturing pales in comparison to 25,000 dead.

Amen and amen.

I am reminded that Damascus is the oldest continuously-inhabited capital city in the world. It has been Jerusalem and Carthage and Rome and Moscow, and Washington and Ottawa.

It has grown anew from fields and streets sown with blood, time and time again, Although all blood is shed in vain, let us hope that there will be a spring when the killing is spent, when a few flowers from that ancient soil can bloom in hopeful splendour.

[syrakusos]

It will be interesting to see how people will feel about them having nuclear weapons and long range missiles when they are just minutes off the coast of NYC and Washington DC.

Dennis

Well... New York City would be a loss...

But, you know, anyone who wargamed this even once would have to conclude that the pit of glass once known as Iran used to be a nation in SW Asia. It's the looter mentality, or the complete lack of mentality by looters. I am reminded of the scene in the movie "Entebbe" where they're in the Israeli command center and the guy at the bank of com screens says over his shoulder, "I wonder how Idi Amin thinks this will end?" And the other guy says, "He thinks it will never end."

(They were stretching the meaning of the word 'think'.)