The United States has moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf in order to intimidate Iran and increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking the Islamic Republic after a partial breakdown of nuclear talks last month.
“The message to Iran is, ‘Don’t even think about it,'” one senior Defense Department official told the New York Times. “Don’t even think about closing the strait. We’ll clear the mines. Don’t even think about sending your fast boats out to harass our vessels or commercial shipping. We’ll put them on the bottom of the gulf.”
Much of the motivation for expanding the military presence around Iran is to placate hysterical Israeli concerns, expressed in public as an apocalyptic fear of make-believe Iranian nuclear weapons. The reinforcements are meant to show Israel that, as one senior Obama administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”
The build up, planned for at least a year, comes mainly in the form of Navy warships and minesweepers patrolling the waterway to the south of Iran. The Obama administration has also put stealthy F-22 and F-15C warplanes into two separate bases in the Persian Gulf.
“Those additional attack aircraft give the United States military greater capability against coastal missile batteries that could threaten shipping, as well as the reach to strike other targets deeper inside Iran,” reports the New York Times.
US policy toward the region is now primarily about militarily threatening Iran by surrounding the country with readied forces and weapons. Iran also faces harsh US-led economic warfare in the form of a sweeping oil embargo, to the detriment of the Iranian people.
The stated justification for this aggressiveness is Iran’s supposedly disputed program. The problem is that nobody disputes, including the whole of the military and intelligence community, the fact that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program and has demonstrated no intention to start one.
Washington’s posture is a bid to dominate the world’s most economically important region. When Obama accelerated the deployment of warships to the Gulf in 2010, the New York Times described it as “part of a coordinated administration strategy to increase pressure on Iran” and also “intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East.”
Onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz last February, BBC reporter Jonathan Beale explained, “This carrier and these [fighter] jets are more than just a show of force, they’re here to send a clear message to Iran as to who really controls these waters.”
The centrality of oil markets in the US confrontation with Iran is instructive here. Much of the conflict is based on a power play from Washington to try to neuter Iran’s regional influence and make them obedient.
In a secret memo on Iran written in 1982 to the National Security Council, this centrality was spelled out. “The importance of the Gulf region to the US resides largely in its oil,” said the memo. “The power to interrupt the supply of this [oil] flow entails the power to wreak havoc on the economies of the west.”
The memo explains “whoever is in control of the Gulf’s” oil, “is in a position to have a very large political as well as economic influence in the world.” Iran’s war with Iraq at the time raised concerns in Washington that a possible Iranian victory could lead it to “exert influence” over Iraq and Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia.
“We may soon be faced with a situation,” the memo continues, “in which a significant portion of the oil supplies to the West are heavily influenced by Iran or by political forces hostile to the West or by forces unable or uninterested in maintaining the flow of oil.”
The same fundamental calculus remains today. Sanctions in response to Iranian achievement of nuclear capability elicits such a strident response from the US not because of any fears that Iran would use the bomb, but because that sort of deterrent helps eliminate Washington’s “avenues for regime change” and thus increases Iran’s leverage over US attempts to maintain dominance in the Middle East.
Military enforcement is a very bad idea. In the event of war, it gives Iran more targets to hit, and all of them are within the range of Iranian missiles.
The US could probably hit and sink all Iranian navy ships, but probably not all the fast boats. On the other hand, when Iran closes the Strait of Hormus, the US ships that are in the Persian Gulf would have no way out to escape and they would likewise be all hit and drowned.
Look: US and NATO are a militarism regime, proving the matter goes back to US and NATO’s being at war for last 60 years. US and its “mighty” army with English and French, German and other NATO countries are not in persian gulf to provide humanitarian aid to Saudis or UAE kings. If NY Times just discovered that US and NATO militarism regimes are occupying the Gulf is because NY Times never studied the facts, nor they are willing to understand a simple matter that US is only interested in Oil and the investments that Saudis – Kuwaitis King – UAE have in US and US in these countries.
Let me give you an example, Kuwait was part of Iraq, the English in 1921 divided that part of Iraq and give it to a Bedouin family called Ben Salah, Bush family have an interests in that country in what is called Gulf Oil Company, therefore Bush was eager to get into Kuwait and “free" Kuwait from one dictator to one that his family have a business relation with. Here NY Times didn't bother to study but supported 1990 Gulf war so when Bush regime invaded Iraq.
To some extend these countries have some to say about the US – EU foreign policies and for that matter to the English government. For one most of EU is under control of monarchism, so is Saudis and UAE. The UAE and Saudis are about to buy the entire England with their investments in all kind of business including the soccer teams and sport arenas. There is nothing that England produces and they don't have a share or two and to a lesser extend is the fact with US present economy.
Saudis and UEA are the largest buyer of US and English war machinery, so for one the US and England needs to protect their loyal – royal costumer. Therefore, NATO and US cannot afford to lose their “friendship" with these tyrants – dictatorial no matter how they operate or govern their countries.
This is the way that capitalism practice business, they will sleep with anyone where they can smell money and profit. Otherwise Saudis are as tyranny – dictators as any other dictatorial regimes in this world if not worse, yet US and EU governments wanting to go to bed with all of them to keep capitalism, its social economic and militarism regimes so they can continue with what they are best at, create wars and wars and wars again.
The US keeps talking smack and then when a volley of SS22 Sunburns sink three carriers and Iraq tells the US to forget about using it as a base, the US will be wondering how it blundered into this mess. To say Iran can not stop shipping in the gulf is ridiculous and totally underestimates the Moskit missile. Ships are giant slow moving anchors and the US has no money left for a war. When they also hit Saudi oil facilities and gas it $9 per gallon the bottom will fall out of the market for most Americans who are already living on hotdogs and Ramen Noodles. I hope Iran gives the US those SS300 missiles and makes things uncomfortable for loudmouth Hillary. BTW it look like in Pakistan "She came, she saw and she apologized."
Joe, thanks. That last line of yours rhymes pretty well with: I came, I saw, he died.
No money left for war ? I'd like to see that day come ! It's been a long time coming.
The former us domino theory finally has been realized, but just in the opposite direction !
30 Years ago I asked me who are the good boys- the communists or capitalists. Only the non-existent or peaceful eastern block could have shown this.
So this is the result: NO PEACE
Peace is a deathly danger for US defense industry and also Oil- and other industries want to fight for robbery and their interests.
Birds of a feather — Flock together
So who should rule the Middle-East, honest and peaceful Iran — or dishonest and aggressive Empire USA?
Well now, that depend entirely upon whether the Middle-East is basically honest or dishonest. For this is what rebellion and terrorism is all about, a government that is not in close harmony with the people’s morality.
Iran is shaking so hard mines will fall out of their boots rolling into the straight.
Wake up Mr. Glaser. all the courts in EU, UK and US agreed MEK is not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters. They are victim of a dirty deals between US (State Dep.) and Mullahs in Iran. At least try to be fare.
The Pacific Theatre of War2 saw successful strikes of American PT boats.America's battleships were out of commission from Pearl Harbour so the only force to be deployed against the Imperial fleets were the PT's.They harassed and scattered the Japanese fleet so badly that MacArthur's strategy of island hopping and bypassing Japanese held islands was achievable.The waters of the Strait of Hormuz are much more restricted and narrow than those waters of the Pacific used so many years ago by the little boats.Iran has factories that can build these boats as fast as America can sink them and they now have a factory cranking out small cruise missiles to be fitted to these craft.I have read that the cruise missile factory is running 24/7,cranking out these missiles.
You know I just figured out that 'All options are on the table' really means that only the option of war is on the table. Peace and/or diplomacy certainly has never been.
The funny thing is, Iran isn't intimidated. They've already reiterated their intention to take down US assets in the Middle East (and, presumably) anywhere else in the world it chooses to, and they are determined enough to do it should we allow ourselves to be suck into open conflict.
Iran is not Iraq, and they're strong and they know we're coming. Even if Iran itself is occupied, how many decades worth of destruction will they wreak upon us in-country and elsewhere?