[IsraelTimes] Islamic republic seeking to counter presence of US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf by sailing fleet near American waters.Iran is set to deploy a fleet of warships to the western Atlantic Ocean in the coming months, a naval commander said Friday, in an apparent bid to counter the presence of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
| Golly. One is reminded of Chinese admiral Zheng He, who was similarly sent sailing abroad with a grand fleet... |
"The Atlantic Ocean is a long route, and it is likely that this Iranian mission would take five months to complete," he said.
| One does hope, for the sake of their amour propre, that there will be no need to rescue them along the way, given that they are not accustomed to making trans-oceanic voyages. |
| Inshallah. |
The 13,000-ton vessel named after a mountain in northern Iran, joined the Islamic republic’s naval fleet in December.
Iran, which has been developing its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and fighter planes as a part of an arms development program initiative since 1992, often boasts of new achievements or acquisitions that cannot be independently verified.
The flotilla announcement is likely intended to boost Iran’s military image amid rising tensions with the United States, which in November re-imposed all sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
In December, the US deployed an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, the first since America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and breaking the longest carrier absence in the volatile region since at least the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
A day after the arrival of the USS John C. Stennis, Iran launched a military drill in the waterway’s strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for nearly a third of all oil traded by sea.
The strait at its narrowest point is 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide, in the waters between Iran and Oman.
Despite being so narrow and within the territorial waters of those two nations, the strait is viewed as an international transit route. American forces routinely travel through the area, despite sometimes tense encounters with the Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate within the country’s Shiite theocracy whose major achievement was the nuclear deal, has repeatedly warned any attempt to stop Iran’s export of crude oil could see it close off the strait.
