Iran To Launch A "Hormuz Closing" Maneuver

niceguy2011

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US Aircraft Carrier 'enters' Iran wargames zone
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TEHRAN, Dec 29: A US aircraft carrier entered a zone near the Strait of Hormuz being used by the Iranian navy for wargames, an Iranian official said on Thursday amid rising tensions over the key oil-transit channel.
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"A US aircraft carrier was spotted inside the manoeuvre zone... by a navy reconnaissance aircraft," Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi, the spokesman for the Iranian exercises, told the official IRNA news agency. Iranian planes and vessels took video and photos of the US ship and the weaponry and aircraft it was carrying, he added, according to a report carried by state television.
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"We are prepared, in accordance with international law, to confront offenders who do not respect our security perimeters during the manoeuvres," the IRIB network quoted Mousavi as saying."We suggest that trans-regional forces completely and seriously take any warning issued by any unit of (Iran's) naval forces," he said.The US aircraft carrier was believed to the USS John C. Stennis, one of the US navy's biggest warships.US officials announced Wednesday that the ship and its accompanying carrier strike group moved through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch at the entrance to the Gulf that is the world's most important choke point for oil shipments.
After warnings from the Iranian government and navy this week that Iran could close the strait if threatened by further Western sanctions, the US Defence Department warned Wednesday that such actions "will not be tolerated."
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The United States maintains a navy presence in the Gulf in large part to ensure oil traffic there is unhindered.Iran, which is already subject to several rounds of sanctions over its nuclear programme, has repeatedly said it could target the Strait of Hormuz if attacked or its economy is strangled.Such a move could cause havoc in the world oil market, disrupting the fragile global economy.The Islamic republic is halfway through 10 days of navy exercises in international waters to the east of the strait that have included the laying of mines and the use of aerial drones, according to Iranian media.Missiles and torpedoes were to be test fired in coming days.
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The wargames zone covers an area of 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) in the Gulf of Oman into the Gulf of Aden, according to Iranian media.So far, Iran and the United States have limited themselves to rhetoric and naval manoeuvres. But analysts and the oil market are watching the situation carefully, fearing a spark that could ignite open confrontation between the longtime foes.The United States had proposed a military hotline between Tehran and Washington to defuse any "miscalculations" that could occur as their navies brush against each other. But Iran in September rejected that offer.
should change "enter ' to "escaped".
They escaped from their base inside the Persian Gulf to Oman gulf.
 

asianobserve

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Military officials said the USS Carl Vinson arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group, which Iran last week warned not to return to the Gulf after departing in late December. The Stennis was due to return to its home port in San Diego but the Pentagon did not say when that would happen. Another carrier strike group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, concluded a port visit to Thailand on Tuesday and was now in the Indian Ocean. It is on track to join the Vinson in the Central Command area of operations, which begins in the neighboring Arabian Sea.
USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group:



USS Carl Vinson Strike Group:




USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group:




I think they can handle the military job. But the bigger question, diplomacy and World economy, can it be handled properly in case of war?
 

Oracle

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Don't cross the 'red line' or we will take action: US warns Iran

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a "red line" that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.

The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a "red line" if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil - about a fifth of the world's daily oil trade - flow through every day.

Gen Martin E Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would "take action and reopen the strait," which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran's closing of the strait.

The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of American concern about rising tensions over the strait, where American naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Revolutionary Guards naval captain could do something provocative on his own, setting off a larger crisis.

"If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it's the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf," Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week.

Administration officials and Iran analysts said they continued to believe that Iran's threats to close the strait, coming amid deep frictions over Iran's nuclear program and possible sanctions, were bluster and an attempt to drive up the price of oil. Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran's petroleum exports - and for its food and consumer imports - would amount to economic suicide.

"They would basically be taking a vow of poverty with themselves," said Dennis B. Ross, who until last month was one of President Obama's most influential advisers on Iran. "I don't think they're in such a mood of self sacrifice."

But Pentagon officials, who plan for every contingency, said that, however unlikely, Iran does have the military capability to close the strait. Although Iran's naval forces are hardly a match for those of the United States, for two decades Iran has been investing in the weaponry of "asymmetric warfare" - mines, fleets of heavily armed speed boats and antiship cruise missiles hidden along Iran's 1,000 miles of Persian Gulf coastline - which have become a threat to the world's most powerful navy.

"The simple answer is yes, they can block it," General Dempsey said on CBS on Sunday.

Estimates by naval analysts of how long it could take for American forces to reopen the strait range from a day to several months, but the consensus is that while Iran's naval forces could inflict damage, they would ultimately be destroyed.

"Their surface fleet would be at the bottom of the ocean, but they could score a lucky hit," said Michael Connell, the director of the Iranian studies program at the Center for Naval Analysis, a research organization for the Navy and Marine Corps. "An antiship cruise missile could disable a carrier."

Iran has two navies: one, its traditional state navy of aging big ships dating from the era of the shah, and the other a politically favored Revolutionary Guards navy of fast-attack speedboats and guerrilla tactics. Senior American naval officers say that the Iranian state navy is for the most part professional and predictable, but that the Revolutionary Guards navy, which has responsibility for the operations in the Persian Gulf, is not.

"You get cowboys who do their own thing," Mr. Connell said. One officer with experience at the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said the Revolutionary Guards navy shows "a high probability for buffoonery."

The Revolutionary Guards navy has been steadily building and buying faster missile boats and stockpiling what American experts say are at least 2,000 naval mines. Many are relatively primitive, about the size of an American garbage can, and easy to slip into the water. "Iran's credible mining threat can be an effective deterrent to potential enemy forces," an unclassified report by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the American Navy's intelligence arm, concluded in 2009. "The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow chokepoint that could be mined effectively in a relatively short amount of time" - with disruptions within hours and more serious blockage in place over days.

Although the United States would respond with minesweepers, analysts said American naval forces might encounter layers of simultaneous attacks. The Iranians could launch antiship missiles from their coastline, islands or oil platforms and at the same time surround any American ship with missile-armed speedboats. "The immediate issue is to get the mines," Mr. Connell said. "But they're going to have to deal with the antiship cruise missiles and you'll have small boats swarming and it's all going to be happening at the same time."

The United States could take out the antiship missile launchers with strikes from fighter jets or missiles, but analysts said it could take time to do so because the launchers on shore are mobile and often camouflaged.

The tight squeeze of the strait, which is less than 35 miles wide at its narrowest point, offers little maneuvering room for warships. "It would be like a knife fight in a phone booth," said a senior Navy officer. The strait's shipping lanes are even narrower: both the inbound and outbound lanes are two miles wide, with only a two-mile-wide stretch separating them.

American officials indicated that the recent and delicate messages expressing concern about the Strait of Hormuz were conveyed through a channel other than the Swiss government, which the United States has often used as a neutral party to relay diplomatic messages to Tehran.

The United States and Iran have a history of conflicts in the strait - most recently in January 2008, when the Bush administration chastised Iran for a "provocative act" after five armed Iranian speedboats approached three American warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up. The confrontation ended without shots fired or injuries.

In 2002, a classified, $250 million Defense Department war game concluded that small, agile speedboats swarming a naval convoy could inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships. In that game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships - an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels - when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

"The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack," Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military, said in 2008, when the results of the war game were assessed again in light of Iranian naval actions at the time. "The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes."

Don't cross the 'red line' or we will take action: US warns Iran - The Times of IndiaTOI

nytimes
 
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SpArK

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Pentagon Says Iran Provoked US Warships

Pentagon Says Iran Provoked US Warships


As tensions mounted in the Persian Gulf, Iranian Navy high-speed boats taunted two US vessels earlier this month in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US Department of Defence yesterday claimed blah blah blahs banned.


That came at also at high-speed, CNN reported.

The personnel on board the coast guard cutter said that they observed Iranians with AK-47s, and they believe one of the machine guns at the front of one of those Iranian speed boats was pointed right at them.

Eventually, a larger Iranian naval vessel intervened and the small speedboats backed off, said the news channel, which also showed the video footage made available to it by the Department of Defense.

According to CNN blah blah..banned.


news.outlookindia.com | Pentagon Says Iran Provoked US Warships
 

Ray

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Iran is indeed muddying the waters.

Asking for a scene that will upset the works!

Dangerous game!
 

W.G.Ewald

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Iran hopes to provoke US and then cry it is being bullied. Someday intelligent Iranians will rule their country, God willing.
 

Oracle

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Spark,

In most of your posts what are the blah blah banned?
 

Tshering22

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What the hell is IRGC's problem? There's nothing wrong in the Strait of Hormuz and from the looks of it, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are actually upset that there is no war taking place in order to escalate the oil prices world over. This is nothing short of stupidity. If they had attacked the US ships in international waters, entire Middle East would be torn apart.

Though there is enough trouble without a revolution, I'd be relieved if the mulla regime actually gets overthrown. They are becoming a problem for a lot of countries and if this is their idea of dominating middle east (i.e. disrupting oil and gas from Gulf to India and other Asian countries), then we better consider alternatives.

We cannot risk keeping our oil and gas supply lines a hostage to someone else's war threat.
 

p2prada

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I wonder if the Iranians plan on packing explosives on boats and crashing them into ships, in suicide attacks. USS Cole comes to mind and so does the LTTE. Boat bombs.
 

Armand2REP

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What the hell is IRGC's problem?
They are squirming under the pressure of sanctions. Things are falling apart at home so they want to stir up nationalism to divert their attention.
 

Tshering22

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I wonder if the Iranians plan on packing explosives on boats and crashing them into ships, in suicide attacks. USS Cole comes to mind and so does the LTTE. Boat bombs.
That would be what I call the STAGE 3 of a US-Iran war, man. Not happening so soon. But if some lunatic gets the idea reading this forum (say from paki land), it will sure invite WW3.

Something like this:

- USN is forced to retaliate to Iranian pinprick tactics.
- IRN starts targeting US ships.
- US launches cruise missiles and some of them end up striking the largest oil pipelines out of Iran, which are going straight into China.
- China gets pissed and takes this opportunity to mount an assault via Central Asia to target US ships that attacked its oil supplies.
- While trying to get through to north Iran, they overran Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, pissing the Russians off.
- Looking at all this, Pakistan would further go into chaos as its new Red master would not be concentrating on keeping Pakistan in single piece and start creating problems.
- The problems would escalate on our borders and we'd be finally forced to intervene.

:laugh:

Kind of off topic but still plausible. :p
 

niceguy2011

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WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a "red line" that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.

The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a "red line" if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil - about a fifth of the world's daily oil trade - flow through every day.

Gen Martin E Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would "take action and reopen the strait," which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran's closing of the strait.

The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of American concern about rising tensions over the strait, where American naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Revolutionary Guards naval captain could do something provocative on his own, setting off a larger crisis.

"If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it's the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf," Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week.

Administration officials and Iran analysts said they continued to believe that Iran's threats to close the strait, coming amid deep frictions over Iran's nuclear program and possible sanctions, were bluster and an attempt to drive up the price of oil. Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran's petroleum exports - and for its food and consumer imports - would amount to economic suicide.

"They would basically be taking a vow of poverty with themselves," said Dennis B. Ross, who until last month was one of President Obama's most influential advisers on Iran. "I don't think they're in such a mood of self sacrifice."

But Pentagon officials, who plan for every contingency, said that, however unlikely, Iran does have the military capability to close the strait. Although Iran's naval forces are hardly a match for those of the United States, for two decades Iran has been investing in the weaponry of "asymmetric warfare" - mines, fleets of heavily armed speed boats and antiship cruise missiles hidden along Iran's 1,000 miles of Persian Gulf coastline - which have become a threat to the world's most powerful navy.

"The simple answer is yes, they can block it," General Dempsey said on CBS on Sunday.

Estimates by naval analysts of how long it could take for American forces to reopen the strait range from a day to several months, but the consensus is that while Iran's naval forces could inflict damage, they would ultimately be destroyed.

"Their surface fleet would be at the bottom of the ocean, but they could score a lucky hit," said Michael Connell, the director of the Iranian studies program at the Center for Naval Analysis, a research organization for the Navy and Marine Corps. "An antiship cruise missile could disable a carrier."

Iran has two navies: one, its traditional state navy of aging big ships dating from the era of the shah, and the other a politically favored Revolutionary Guards navy of fast-attack speedboats and guerrilla tactics. Senior American naval officers say that the Iranian state navy is for the most part professional and predictable, but that the Revolutionary Guards navy, which has responsibility for the operations in the Persian Gulf, is not.

"You get cowboys who do their own thing," Mr. Connell said. One officer with experience at the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said the Revolutionary Guards navy shows "a high probability for buffoonery."

The Revolutionary Guards navy has been steadily building and buying faster missile boats and stockpiling what American experts say are at least 2,000 naval mines. Many are relatively primitive, about the size of an American garbage can, and easy to slip into the water. "Iran's credible mining threat can be an effective deterrent to potential enemy forces," an unclassified report by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the American Navy's intelligence arm, concluded in 2009. "The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow chokepoint that could be mined effectively in a relatively short amount of time" - with disruptions within hours and more serious blockage in place over days.

Although the United States would respond with minesweepers, analysts said American naval forces might encounter layers of simultaneous attacks. The Iranians could launch antiship missiles from their coastline, islands or oil platforms and at the same time surround any American ship with missile-armed speedboats. "The immediate issue is to get the mines," Mr. Connell said. "But they're going to have to deal with the antiship cruise missiles and you'll have small boats swarming and it's all going to be happening at the same time."

The United States could take out the antiship missile launchers with strikes from fighter jets or missiles, but analysts said it could take time to do so because the launchers on shore are mobile and often camouflaged.

The tight squeeze of the strait, which is less than 35 miles wide at its narrowest point, offers little maneuvering room for warships. "It would be like a knife fight in a phone booth," said a senior Navy officer. The strait's shipping lanes are even narrower: both the inbound and outbound lanes are two miles wide, with only a two-mile-wide stretch separating them.

American officials indicated that the recent and delicate messages expressing concern about the Strait of Hormuz were conveyed through a channel other than the Swiss government, which the United States has often used as a neutral party to relay diplomatic messages to Tehran.

The United States and Iran have a history of conflicts in the strait - most recently in January 2008, when the Bush administration chastised Iran for a "provocative act" after five armed Iranian speedboats approached three American warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up. The confrontation ended without shots fired or injuries.

In 2002, a classified, $250 million Defense Department war game concluded that small, agile speedboats swarming a naval convoy could inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships. In that game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships - an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels - when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

"The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack," Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military, said in 2008, when the results of the war game were assessed again in light of Iranian naval actions at the time. "The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes."

Don't cross the 'red line' or we will take action: US warns Iran - The Times of IndiaTOI

nytimes
They said same thing to NK long time ago.
 
Last edited:

Ray

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A correct advise to Iran!

Iran is trying to destabilise the world economy by threatening to stop oil shipment by closing the Hormuz.
 

Oracle

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That would be what I call the STAGE 3 of a US-Iran war, man. Not happening so soon. But if some lunatic gets the idea reading this forum (say from paki land), it will sure invite WW3.

Something like this:

- USN is forced to retaliate to Iranian pinprick tactics.
- IRN starts targeting US ships.
- US launches cruise missiles and some of them end up striking the largest oil pipelines out of Iran, which are going straight into China.
- China gets pissed and takes this opportunity to mount an assault via Central Asia to target US ships that attacked its oil supplies.
- While trying to get through to north Iran, they overran Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, pissing the Russians off.
- Looking at all this, Pakistan would further go into chaos as its new Red master would not be concentrating on keeping Pakistan in single piece and start creating problems.
- The problems would escalate on our borders and we'd be finally forced to intervene.

:laugh:

Kind of off topic but still plausible. :p
So, China targets US ships because some US cruise missiles hit a pipeline in Iran that transports oil to China?
China then does a walk in the park and overruns Tajikistan & Kyrgyzstan?

This is bad even as fiction.
 

Armand2REP

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So, China targets US ships because some US cruise missiles hit a pipeline in Iran that transports oil to China?
China then does a walk in the park and overruns Tajikistan & Kyrgyzstan?

This is bad even as fiction.
If China moves into those CIS states, they will be nuked by Russia.
 

Godless-Kafir

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So what is the news on this one? Any updates?

This will put a huge drain on US economy if they go to war with Iran to now. I hope NATO saves some spunk for porkistan.
 

Mikkis

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Fars News Agency :: Russia Warns to Take Tough Action against Military Strike on Iran

Russia Warns to Take Tough Action against Military Strike on Iran

TEHRAN (FNA)- Moscow warned the western powers to avoid a military threat against Iran, cautioning that Russia would regard any military intervention linked to Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its own security.


The escalating conflict around Iran should be contained by common effort, otherwise the promising Arab Spring will grow into a "scorching Arab Summer," Moscow's departing Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin warned on Friday.

"Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security," Rogozin, who is now Russia's deputy prime minister, said two days after the killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran by a hitman on a motorcycle.

"We are definitely interested in the non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction," Rogozin said on Friday. "But at the same time, we believe that any country has the right to have what it needs to feel comfortable, including Iran."

Dmitry Rogozin, who served as Russia's special envoy to NATO in 2008-2011, was appointed deputy prime minister by Vladimir Putin in December. On Friday he was bidding farewell to his NATO colleagues in the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.

Rogozin, often described as an anti-Western hawk will oversee Russia's defense sector when he returns to Moscow.

The remarks came as Kremlin Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev, who is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said Israel was pushing the United States towards war with Iran.
 

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