Thread: U.S. Navy: Iran prepares suicide bomb boats in Gulf

U.S. Navy: Iran prepares suicide bomb boats in Gulf
By Warda Al-Jawahiry
MANAMA | Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:37pm EST

Feb 12 (Reuters) - Iran has built up its naval forces in the Gulf and prepared boats that could be used in suicide attacks, but the U.S. Navy can prevent it from blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region said on Sunday.

Iran has made a series of threats in recent weeks to disrupt shipping in the Gulf or strike U.S. forces in retaliation if its oil trade is shut down by sanctions, or if its disputed nuclear programme comes under attack.

"They have increased the number of submarines ... they increased the number of fast attack craft," Vice Admiral Mark Fox told reporters. "Some of the small boats have been outfitted with a large warhead that could be used as a suicide explosive device. The Iranians have a large mine inventory."

"We have watched with interest their development of long range rockets and short, medium and long range ballistic missiles and of course ... the development of their nuclear programme," Fox, who heads the U.S. Fifth Fleet, said at a briefing on the fleet's base in the Gulf state of Bahrain.

Iran now has 10 small submarines, he said.

Military experts say the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet patrolling the Gulf - which always has at least one giant supercarrier accompanied by scores of jets and a fleet of frigates and destroyers - is overwhelmingly more powerful than Iran's navy.

But ever since al Qaeda suicide bombers in a small boat killed 17 sailors on board the destroyer U.S.S. Cole in a port in Yemen in 1996, Washington has been wary of the vulnerability of its huge battleships to bomb attacks by small enemy craft.

Asked whether the U.S. Navy was prepared for an attack or other trouble in the Gulf, Fox said: "We are very vigilant, we have built a wide range of options to give the president and we are ready... What if it happened tonight? We are ready today."

Iranian officials have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet to the Gulf through which nearly all of the Middle East's oil sails.

Asked if he took Iran's threats seriously, Fox Said: "Could they make like extremely difficult for us? Yes they could. If we did nothing and they were able to operate without being inhibited, yeah they could close it, but I can't see that we would ever be in that position."

He added that diplomacy should be given priority in resolving the tension.

"So when you hear discussion about all this overheated rhetoric from Iran we really believe that the best way to handle this is with diplomacy... I am absolutely convinced that is the way to go. It is our job to be prepared. We are vigilant."

Contacts between the U.S. Navy and Iranian craft in the Gulf region were routine, Fox said, referring to cases where his sailors helped Iranian ships that were in distress or threatened by pirates.

In addition to commanding the Fifth Fleet, Fox is also the commander of a multinational naval task force charged with ensuring Gulf shipping routes stay open. Although most of its firepower is American, the task force also includes other Western countries and the Gulf Arab states.

The European Union slapped an embargo on Iranian oil last month, which is due to kick in completely by July 1. The United States and EU have both imposed new sanctions on Iran's central bank which make it difficult for countries to pay Tehran for oil and for Iran to pay for the goods it imports. (Editing by Firouz Sedarat and Peter Graff)

U.S. Navy: Iran prepares suicide bomb boats in Gulf | Reuters


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WW3 JUST STARTED - YouTube



Jan 25, 2012

Iran cornerstone of possible WW3 over Mid East, World War III (aka WWIII or Third World War) denotes a successor to World War II (1939--1945) that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature.

In the wake of World War I, World War II, the commencement of the Cold War and the development, testing and use of nuclear weapons, there was early widespread speculation as to the next global war.

This war was anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities, and explored in fiction in many countries. Concepts ranged from limited use of atomic weapons, to destruction of the planet.Some such as Norman Podhoretz in his World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism and historians have suggested that the Cold War can be identified as World War III because it was fought, although by proxy, on a global scale, with the main combatants, the United States and later NATO, and the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries providing political, military and economic support while not engaging in direct combat. Eliot Cohen, the director of strategic studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, declared in the Wall Street Journal, a little more than a month after the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, that the struggle against terrorism was more than a law-enforcement operation, and would require military conflict beyond the invasion of Afghanistan. Cohen, like Marenches, considered World War III to be history. "A less palatable but more accurate name is World War IV," he wrote. "The Cold War was World War III, which reminds us that not all global conflicts entail the movement of multi-million-man armies, or conventional front lines on a map." [1] In a 2006 interview, US President George W. Bush labeled the ongoing War on Terror as "World War III" also.[2]

On the July 10 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, host John Gibson interviewed Michael Ledeen, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and said "some are calling the global war on terror something else, something more like World War III." But Ledeen responded that "it's more like World War IV because there was a Cold War, which was certainly a world war." Ledeen added that "probably the start of it [World War IV] was the Iranian revolution of 1979." Similarly, on the May 24 edition of CNBC's Kudlow and Company, host Lawrence Kudlow, discussing a book by former deputy Under-secretary of Defense Jed Babbin, said "World War IV is the terror war, and war with China would be World War V."[3]

[edit]Historical close callsBefore the end of the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was concerned that given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unreliable, there existed a Soviet threat to Western Europe. In April-May 1945, British Armed Forces developed the Operation Unthinkable, the Third World War plan; its primary goal was "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire."[4] The plan was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible.

With the development of the arms race, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, an apocalyptic war between the United States and the Soviet Union was considered possible. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 is generally thought to be the historical point at which the risk of World War III was closest. The Doomsday Clock, which has served as a symbol of historic World War III close calls since the Truman Doctrine went into effect in 1947, has also indicated historic World War III close calls. Other potential triggers have included the following World War III is also a common theme in popular culture. Who might start World War III and how it might start are perennial topics of discussion in press. A vast apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction literature exists describing the postulated execution and aftermath of World War III, several notable movies have been made based on World War III, and it is the topic of various comics, video games, songs, magazines, radio programs, newspapers and billboards.

" I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. "