Iran Tests Naval Cruise Missile During War Games

Hugh Pickens writes "Iran says it has successfully test fired a cruise missile during naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz, and the surface-to-sea missile, known as the Qader, struck its targets with precision and destroyed them. Iran had previously announced that it intended to test a missile during the exercises, raising fears that it might try to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for tougher international sanctions. The Qader missile is said to be capable of striking warships at a range of about 125 miles, a distance that would include some American forces in the Gulf region as Iran is about 140 miles at its nearest point from Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. Analysts say Iran's increasingly strident rhetoric, which has pushed oil prices higher, is aimed at sending a message to the West that it should think twice about the economic cost of putting further pressure on Tehran. 'No order has been given for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,' Iran's state television quoted navy chief Habibollah Sayyari as saying. 'But we are prepared for various scenarios.'"

Comments

Why ARE we persecuting Iran?

[msobkow]

I know about the "risk" of nuclear proliferation, but as we did nothing about Kim Il Jong for decades in North Korea, I think the fears of Iran having nukes are over-rated. If a blustering blow-hard like Kim could threaten his neighbours repeatedly with invasion and war without reprise, why is the Iranian rhetoric considered any worse?

Certainly Iran executes a lot of people for violating a strict interpretation of Islamic law, so anyone who's against religion in government has a fundamental problem with Iran. But invasion is a poor way of protecting the people from a government that places dogma over reason. Surely diplomatic discourse would be more effective than the threat of invasion.

And that's really the problem I see. The US keeps beating the invasion and war drums. Iran refuses to back down, the mouse that roared at the lion. Neither side seems willing to act rationally.

If you're going to constantly go on about invading a nation, yeah, they're gonna get paranoid about BEING invaded. They're going to want to build up their military and their armaments to fight back, including nukes.

And with Israel and it's nukes so close to Iran and clearly a darling of US policy, the threat to Iran is imminent, at least from their perspective. Mind you, the Iranian government doesn't help that situation with their ongoing diatribe against Israel. More bluster that escalates instead of negotiates.

Recent US history is a track record of invasion and attack for reasons that turned out to be unjustified in the end. It doesn't give me a comfortable feeling to see them dictating policy to Iran when the US handling of Cuba has shown that appeasing the US does NOT mean the sanctions will be dropped.

Maybe if someone were to take a serious step like disarming Israel's nuclear arsenal, things could settle down in the middle east.

Re:Who needs crazies at home

[Black Parrot]

Iran is doing what all failing governments do, redirecting the ire of their people to someone other than itself.

Kind of like the USA's warmongering politicians are doing with Iran?

Re:so

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure there are any naval battles to be had anymore, unless we end up living to see WWIII. The sea-faring bits of our Navy really only exists as an aircraft and missile platform, not for serious confrontations with other naval vessels. We certainly have the equipment, but if we ever had to use it we'd already be looking at much more serious trouble. The countries that have real naval combat facility (that we couldn't safely annihilate from a long ways away) also have nukes and delivery technologies.

Re:Would love to see some naval battle

[Black Parrot]

Nor is Iran technologically in the dark ages, having its own robotics industry and technology from China and Russia.

I'm sure China would be delighted to see us throw away a few trillion dollars on another war that won't gain us anything except bad PR. We can sell them some more of our assets to pay for it.

Re:Would love to see some naval battle

[LWATCDR]

That is a pretty iffy tactic at best.
And I feel you would be very mistaken if you think that nothing was learned from that.
Here is one way that it would probably go down IHMO.
The US fleet except would stand off outside of cruise missile range except for forward deployed Submarines.
F-18 and land based F-16s, F15s, and F-22s would hunt any recon aircraft that are sent out to locate the fleet. While ATACMS are moved to the coast for counter battery fire on SAM sites and land based cruise missiles.
Any ships of the Iranian navy that stay in port will be targeted with ATACMS and Tomahawks. Any ships at see will be hit by Harpoons. B-2s, B-1s, and B-52s will take out command and control, air fields, and radar sites using stand off weapons. While P-3s, Seahawks, and Seawolf class subs hunt the Kilo class subs and 688is and Ohio Class SGNs get into position for Tomahawk strikes.
Once Iran's sensors are degraded the US will us helicopters to mimic the fleet. They will fly low and slow and us radar repeaters to look like large ships. When the Iranians fire at those targets their radars will be taken out by HARMS and the missile sites by JDAMS, JSOWS or ATACMs depending on the location.
At that point the fleet can move closer and any remaining anti ship missiles should be taken care of by the CGs and DDGs escorting the carriers.
The Iranian fleet will be gone, The Iranian air force will be gone. The on threat left will be from their mobile ballistic missiles so we will see how well SM-3s and PAC-3s really work but if they do work as well as expected and if the launchers are within range of ATACMS for counter battery fire then the Iranian air and navy forces will no longer be a threat and any land forces they use to attack with will be vulnerable to air strikes.
I left out the UAVs which will be used to watch for and take out any small boats and to map radar sites for strikes.
And that is just using publicly available data.