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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.'"
There was no good naval battle on CNN in a while. If it happens, it will be really exciting 1 hour, because that's how long it will take to destroy all Iran's fleet.
Read about small boats and aircraft did during US war games under Gen. Paul van Ripen.
U Sank My Carrier! By Gary Brecher
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779
"send everything at once"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
When there are so many too choose from abroad?
Iran is doing what all failing governments do, redirecting the ire of their people to someone other than itself. Granted they have had their "Great Satan" for many many years the uprisings and home grown terrorism does show the state cannot control all factions present within its borders.
So they need to have their people believe that all fault is outside of the country while at the same time explaining the lack of living standards and such is the great sacrifice needed to uphold Iranian values and freedom in the face of the great enemies abroad. Wow, sounds like North Korea as well.
Iran is the dog on the other side of the fence, barking and slavering to get at you. Yes it has teeth and yes it will hurt, but its going to get such an ass kicking it really enjoys that fence as much as you do.
With all the exaggerated press in the US about war mongering politicians its not exactly reassuring to see that there are still so many crazies abroad to give the locals reason. Iran is threatening more than the US with this boast of closing the straights. Perhaps they are trying to wake their Iman they so desperately need.... most likely a failing leader most likely needs the crisis and possibly the war to stay in power.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think the message is more "Fuck with us and people die" rather than "We will conquer the Earth". Just my 2c.
Or worse, "Fuck with us and your voters will be paying ten dollars a gallon for gasoline."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
Blockades are defined by international law as an act of war. The moment you try to enforce this blockade, you'll have effectively declared war on every Persian Gulf state and anyone trading with them.
* Caveat: In the last ten years, I have only spent 2 years in the Persian Gulf, transiting the Hormuz approximately 20 times.*
- The strait is approximately 12 miles wide at the "choke-point".
- A Qader has an maximum range of 125 miles.
- Most of the corporations that run tankers through the straits are extremely risk adverse. All it would take is one missile being "tested" in the vicinity of the shipping lanes to cause the number of tankers to plummet.
- There is a huge number of container ships that go from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean via the Suez (and vice versa), and almost the same number of ships that "turn left" instead of "right" there.
- Jet-skis can and do transit the straits. The bigger smugglers use speedboats, but the intelligence agencies use the personal watercraft sized craft and semi-submersible planing hulls to move agents and for surveillance. What airborne surveillance aircraft that Iran does have are slow moving and could probably be best engaged by M-4's and SAWS.
- The US Navy presence in Iraq is rather small compared to the USN presence in Bahrain and the UAE.
- Iran's militarized coast guard regularly harasses ships that transit the strait anyway. Have to love the 'Great Satan Running Dog' rants that comes up on chan 16.
- Iran's air force could be wiped from the skies by a single squadron of F-18F's loaded for dedicated air to air. It is their waterborne forces that are actually a threat.
- Two Global Hawks at high-altitude would be able cover the entire Persian Gulf with real time targeting data.
- Sniper rifles work just as well at sea as they do on land.
This is just more evidence that Iraq was a huge mistake, not like we needed any more but here it is. When Bush outlined his "axis of evil", he decided to go after the least "evil" country on the list, Iraq. Why? Well most people will say oil, or personal vendetta, and while there is some truth to that, the real answer is Iraq was the weakest of the 3. Bush needed a war to boost his poll numbers, so he chose the country that was least able to defend itself.
Had he gone after North Korea, the result would have been an unmitigated humanitarian crisis as North Korea would have unleashed a barrage of missiles and artillery fire(possibly with chemical and/or biological weapons) on Seoul, and the North Koreans are so dug in that there would be no way they could be neutralized without significant damage to Seoul and the surrounding areas. Kind of nice for your enemy to put half their population and probably around 2/3 of their economic output well in range of your artillery isn't it?
Now look at Iran, they have the strongest navy in the middle east(Iraq didn't have anything resembling a functioning navy when the US invaded). They also have decent missiles thanks in no small part to the North Koreans, and a relatively formidable ground force. US casualties in Iran would have been huge, and thats assuming Iran DOESNT have any chemical/biological capabilities....
Now look at Iraq. Saddam eventually disarmed and complied with almost all the UN regulations. His army was incredibly weakened by the embargoes and his air force crippled. And now he is dead. Gadaffi gave up WMD, and now he is dead. What message does this send to dictators? If you disarm, we kill you, if you can cause massive amounts of suffering, we negotiate.
Now look at the Iranian regime, there are only 2 things keeping them even remotely popular, and thus probably in power, in Iran.
1. Defending agains the US(Which thanks to the cowboy president many Iranians legitimately think might invade)
2. Oil revenues(which is why oil continued to plummet after the recession started, Ahmadinejad and Chavez, among others made so many promises to their people assuming oil was going to be over $150/barrel. When the price fell they had no choice but to continue to keep supply high in order to keep the money flowing in)
So now what is happening? The regime knows its running out of time, and has to get nukes fast or else risk being wiped out. Stopping Iranian oil exports would essentially cause chaos at home, so Iran is doing everything in it's power, including going to the brink of war, to keep those oil exports going. It wouldn't be nearly this paranoid about getting nukes if the man-child hadn't decided he wanted to play war hero for daddy and take out a guy that while certainly not, to borrow a phrase from Lewis Black, a snuggy bear, was not any worse than most regimes supported by the US(and the EU before Europeans start getting all self-righteous, France went after Libya and thus has a hand in this too, though not as big as the US's obviously). So instead of his fantasy of making the world safe from tyrants, Bush's actions have basically said, "if you want your regime to stay in power, get WMDs" Good one. The Iraq war will go down as the biggest foreign policy blunder in post-war American history. And while the actual Vietnam and Korean Wars were probably more savage, they were relatively self-contained. The Iraq war(and supporting the Libyan rebels) will have implications that will be felt for decades to come.
Monstar L
And is selling it for Rial and Euros, not dollars. Their oil bourse just last year started trading crude.
That's why they have to be "liberated".
Deleted
instead of other people dying for your enjoyment and corporations' profit
That's quite naive, you are more vested in keeping the sea lanes open than you might initially think. When the oil stops then so do the trucks that deliver food to your local grocery store.
Yes it would be great if we got off foreign oil and delivered food using local or renewable energy but that's not what is going to happen in the next two weeks, and IIRC two weeks is about all there is in the local stores and distribution centers on average.
No there are several countries without nukes that the US navy could not annihilate at range with impunity. Take for example the Swedish Gotland-class submarine, it has on multiple occasions(at least 2 occasions) "sunk" US carriers during naval wargames.
I'd imagine that it would be a pretty big embarrassment to the US navy if they lost one or more of their Carriers to a country with an air force only twice the size of what you can fit on one of those carriers.
Presented to U.S. officials by the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based exile group pushing for an American attack on Iraq, the defector says Saddam is close to finishing a long-range ballistic missile that could hit Cairo; Ankara; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Nicosia, Cyprus, or Tehran. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/658542/posts
That was what we were told in 2002. A decade on, we now know that those "intelligence" reports of WMDs from the INC were actually supplied by a double agent working for Iranian intelligence.
According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/25/usa.iraq10
Oops. And what about those mobile bioweapon labs? It turned out that intelligence came from another unreliable source:
Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.[1][4] On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity.[5] Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
The whole story was made up by one guy who wanted his immigration card, and yet - without any verification - it was used by the Bush administration to justify a war.
And since you brought it up, alll of the intelligence that linked Iraq to 911 was lies as well.... There was no Iraq Islamist link (well, at least until the coalition invaded and plunged the country into a bloody sectarian civil war)
in a serious shooting match between First World (and here we include the Ruskkies and the Chinese) powers the US would have its ass handed to it on a platter.
Seriously? You need to go and review the US naval force relative to China or Russia. It's not even close. In a nonnuclear fight the US loses battles but will inevitably win the war. If it then goes nuclear, well, we can bounce more rubble than anyone.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I don't think the US wants a direct war with, or an invasion of, Iran. I think that in fact is the last thing desired. Internal, covert disruption of war-making capabilities is likely the US and Israeli goal, and certainly those nations (as well as many others) would like nothing more that to see the current Iranian leadership come to an end.
We've all discussed the "wars for oil," but in this case, the US (at least officially) gets no oil from Iran, even though it is ranked as the world's fourth- or fifth-largest producer. The larger danger is Iran's ability to disrupt oil shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, where approximately 20% of the world's oil passes on its way to market. Disruption of this channel would have a major impact on the price of oil world-wide. Therefore, it is in all oil-consuming nations' economic interests to NOT go to war with Iran. Those nations who do get their oil from Iran would be even more directly affected of course, and would have to turn to other producers. This then means more consumers drawing from a reduced supply pool, even further driving up costs.
Make no mistake, the US most certainly spies on Iran (and upon many other countries), and would love to see the current regime fall. Again, though, a war would have the opposite affect, at least in the short term. The Iranian people themselves are not happy under their current leadership (while a quick web search will not turn up much official information, you will find MANY support groups whose aim is to provide help and support for the Iranian public); a war, especially one started by an invader who supports Israel, would most likely turn the public more towards, rather than against, the current regime.
Finally, you are not wrong that ignorance persists in the United States, but so too does it exist around the world. I assume you are not from America, therefore you are likely making your statement in fact from a position OF ignorance, not allowing that there are many Americans who DO make an attempt to understand the world around them, not only in the countries to their north and south, but also in those across the oceans that insulate their nation. It is also true that there are many people around the world make ignorant suppositions, not just about America, but about their own neighboring nations, and about countries around the world. No one group of people has a stranglehold on ignorance, but it is likely to be equally true that no one group of people is totally marred by it, either.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it