Spanning(en) rond Iran

Gestart door Lex, 14/02/2012 | 16:51 uur

Huzaar1

Major military buildup?

Yousaywhat?

Is mij iets ontgaan of ligt daar enkel een vloot en wat versterkte usaf  ?
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion" US secmindef - Jed Babbin"

Lex

Navy sends tiny submersibles to Persian Gulf

WASHINGTON — The Navy is rushing dozens of unmanned underwater craft to the Persian Gulf to help detect and destroy mines in a major military buildup aimed at preventing Iran from closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the event of a crisis, U.S. officials said.

The tiny SeaFox submersibles each carry an underwater television camera, homing sonar and an explosive charge. The Navy bought them in May after an urgent request by Marine Gen. James Mattis, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East.

Each submersible is about 4 feet long and weighs less than 100 pounds. The craft are intended to boost U.S. military capabilities as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program appear to have stalled. Three rounds of talks since April between Iran and the five countries in the United Nations Security Council plus Germany have made little progress.

Some U.S. officials are wary that Iran may respond to tightening sanctions on its banking and energy sectors, including a European Union oil embargo, by launching or sponsoring attacks on oil tankers or platforms in the Persian Gulf. Some officials in Tehran have threatened to close the narrow waterway, a choke point for a fifth of the oil traded worldwide.

The first of the SeaFox submersibles arrived in the Gulf in recent weeks, officials said, along with four MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters and four minesweeping ships, part of a larger buildup of U.S. naval, air and ground forces in the region aimed at Iran.

The U.S. already has sent two aircraft carriers and a squadron of F-22 fighters to the Persian Gulf, and is keeping two U.S. army brigades in Kuwait. Though much of the buildup has been publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon, the deployment of the submersibles has not been publicly disclosed, apparently to avoid alerting Iran.

The SeaFox is small enough to be deployed from helicopters and even small rubber boats, but it also can be dropped off the back of a minesweeper. It is controlled by a fiber optic cable and sends live video back to a camera operator.

It can be used against floating or drifting mines, which Iran has used in the past. It operates up to 300 meters deep, and moves at speeds of up to six knots. But the $100,000 weapon is on what amounts to a suicide mission. The "built-in, large caliber shaped charge" it carries destroys the mine but also the vehicle itself.

Tribune Washington Bureau
July 11, 2012

Ace1

'China investeert $ 20 mrd in Iraanse olievelden'

De Iraanse autoriteiten claimen dat een Chinees bedrijf ruim euro 16 mrd investeert in de ontwikkeling van twee Iraanse olievelden. Om welk Chinees bedrijf het zou gaan, is niet duidelijk. Dat meldde de Iraanse olieminister Rostam Qasemi zondag.

Een dergelijke deal is opmerkelijk na de nieuwe embargo's tegen Iran die vorige week zijn ingegaan. Europa heeft de import van olie uit Iran verboden en de Amerikaanse autoriteiten verbieden financiële transacties met de centrale bank van Iran. Landen die zich daar niet aan houden, mogen geen zaken meer doen in Amerika.

Het bericht uit Teheran wordt bevestigd noch ontkend op de Chinese website China Daily, een belangrijke spreekbuis van de Chinese autoriteiten. Kenners zeggen dat slechts drie Chinese oliebedrijven de slagkracht hebben voor dergelijke investeringen: PetroChina, Cnooc en Sinopec. Deze bedrijven melden niets van de deal op hun websites.

Embargo omzeilen

Afgelopen weekeind meldden de Iraanse autoriteiten ook dat er een manier is gevonden om het Europese olie-embargo te omzeilen. Teheran zegt dat met Europese raffinaderijen is afgesproken ze via een omweg te beleveren. Daarbij zou een privaat consortium een aparte entiteit hebben opgezet. Ook in dit bericht worden geen namen van bedrijven genoemd.

Internationale persbureau's melden tegelijk dat de sancties in Iran duidelijk voelbaar worden. Minder goederen bereiken het land, vooral door het Amerikaanse embargo.

http://fd.nl/economie-politiek/199193-1207/china-investeert-20-mrd-in-iraanse-olievelden

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Iran to shut Hormuz Strait "if threatened": commander

English.news.cn   2012-07-07 20:16:55

TEHRAN, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The chairman of Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Iran will close Hormuz Strait if threatened, Press TV reported on Saturday.

Iran does have the plan to shut down the strategic Strait of Hormuz, but would execute it only if the nation's security is threatened, Major General Hassan Firuzabadi said.

"We do have the plan to close the Strait of Hormuz, since a member of the military must plan for all scenarios," Firuzabadi said Friday on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran.

An Iranian lawmaker also reiterated Wednesday threats that the Islamic republic would close the strategic strait in the Persian Gulf if the Western sanctions against Iran increase.

"If we completely go under the sanctions, we will not let a single drop of oil pass through the Hormuz Strait," said Arsalan Fathipour, head of the Economic Commission of Iranian Majlis ( parliament).

Some Iranian government and military officials have already threatened to use all means, particularly closing the Strait of Hormuz, if the Western sanctions over Tehran's controversial nuclear activities halt Iran's exports and hurt the interests of the Islamic republic.

In January, EU foreign ministers approved new sanctions against Tehran, which prevent its member states from buying the Iranian crude. The sanctions went into effect Sunday.

Moreover, the United States imposed a new round of sanctions of its own in June, targeting financial institutions of any country that buys Iranian oil. However, it has exempted 20 economies from the sanctions for a period of 180 days.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-07/07/c_131701419.htm

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Iran Inaugurates Production Line of New Anti-Armor Missile System

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi on Saturday inaugurated the production line of a new home-made anti-armor missile system named 'Dehlaviyeh'.

"The Dehlaviyeh missile is one of the most hi-tech anti-armor missiles designed for destroying different advanced tanks which are equipped with reactive armor," Vahidi said at the inauguration ceremony of the missile system.

He also reiterated that the missile has been equipped with a special guiding system (which is resistant to different types of enemy's electronic warfare), a warhead and a missile-launcher and a portable engine-propeller.

"The missile system has been designed in a way that it can hit both fix ground targets and mobile armored targets," Vahidi said.

Last August, the Iranian Defense Ministry started mass-production of 73-mm anti-armor rockets capable of piercing and destroying armored vehicles from a 1,300-meter distance.

"The weapon is mobile and due to its low weight, it can be carried by an individual trooper," Vahidi told reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony held to launch the production line of the rocket at the time.

Tehran launched an arms development program during the 1980-88 Iraqi imposed war on Iran to compensate for a US weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and fighter planes.

Yet, Iranian officials have always stressed that the country's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country.

The Iranian Army recently test-fired different types of newly-developed missiles and torpedoes and tested a large number of its home-made weapons, tools and equipments, including submarines, military ships, artillery, choppers, aircraft, UAVs and air defense and electronic systems, in a series of massive military drills.

Defense analysts and military observers say that Iran's wargames and its advancements in weapons production have proved as a deterrent factor, specially at a time of heightened threats by the US.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9103085396

Jah

#521
De sancties beginnen nu echt pijn te doen in Iran.

Oil Backed Up, Iranians Put It on Idled Ships

BANDAR ABBAS, Iran — The hulking tanker Neptune was floating aimlessly this week in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, a fresh coat of black paint barely concealing its true identity as an Iranian ship loaded with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil that no one is willing to buy.

The ship's real name was Iran Astaneh, and it was part of a fleet of about 65 Iranian tankers serving as floating storage facilities for Iranian oil, each one given a nautical makeover to conceal its origin and make a buyer easier to find. The Neptune had been floating there for a month, and local fishermen said there were two even larger tankers anchored nearby.

Iran, faced with increasingly stringent economic sanctions imposed by the international community to force it to abandon any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, has been reluctant to reduce its oil production, fearing that doing so could damage its wells. But Iran has insufficient space to store the crude it cannot sell. So while it furiously works to build storage capacity on shore, it has turned to mothballing at sea.
"We have never seen so many just waiting around," said Rostam, a fisherman and smuggler who regularly works these waters.

After years of defiance and insistence that sanctions were barely being felt at home, Iranians are acknowledging the latest round with growing alarm. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that they were "the strongest yet."

International oil experts say Iranian exports have already been cut by at least a quarter since the beginning of the year, costing Iran roughly $10 billion so far in forgone revenues. Many experts say the pain is only beginning, since oil prices have been falling and Iran's sales should drop even more with the European embargo that went into effect on Sunday.

"They are getting squeezed," said Sadad Al Husseini, former executive vice president for exploration and development of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. "It's too much trouble to buy Iranian oil. Why alienate the United States and Europe? And the rest of OPEC is not very happy with Iran either."

On Wednesday, a Kenyan oil official told Reuters that the country was canceling an agreement to import up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran after Britain warned Kenya that it could run afoul of the sanctions. Meanwhile, South Korea said its imports of Iranian oil fell by nearly 50 percent in May, compared with April.

The drop in crude sales has hit Tehran with multiple challenges. Besides the financial impact, Iran has to figure out what to do with all the oil it continues to produce. Iran is pumping about 2.8 million barrels a day - already down about one million barrels daily since the start of the year. But it is exporting only an estimated 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels a day.

The unsold crude is being stored in what has been estimated to be two-thirds of the Iranian tanker fleet. Most of the ships are sailing in circles around the Persian Gulf as Iran tries to sell the mostly heavy crude at bargain-basement prices.

International oil experts estimate that Iran is now warehousing as much as 40 million barrels - roughly two weeks of production - on the tankers. An additional 10 million barrels are in storage on shore.

"We are now forced to sell our most valuable export product in secret," said Nader Karimi Joni, an Iranian journalist specializing in oil. "Iran had a great reputation; now we have to falsify bills of lading, hide the oil's origin and store oil on ships."

The subterfuge operates on several levels, but here, on the waters off Bandar Abbas, it is all about the tanker, Neptune. Beneath the fresh black paint, the ship's hulk bore the name in English and Persian of the tanker company, NITC.

The ship, one of Iran's smallest, was built in 2000 in South Korea. It carried no flag, and its home port - Bushehr - had first been changed to Valletta, Malta, which had also been painted over. It now said Funafuti, the capital of the Pacific Ocean island nation of Tuvalu.

To conceal their positions - and perhaps to hide just how many loaded ships are at sea - Iran's oil tankers also frequently turn off their GPS tracking devices, according to IHS Fairplay, a London-based ship tracking data company. It mapped out the last-known destinations of all NITC tankers, including the Iran Astaneh, and concluded that 21 were last seen in the Persian Gulf.

"I hear there are a lot more up north close to the oil terminals," said Rostam, the smuggler, as he pulled his small craft up alongside the tanker.

Smugglers regularly zip across the Strait of Hormuz in small speedboats to the northern tip of Oman, Rostam and others said, picking up boxes of all kinds of black-market goods. Along the way, Rostam said, he sees the physical evidence of growing tension in the narrow waterway where one-fifth of the world's oil must travel to get to market.

"We constantly run into United States Navy," Rostam said. "They only stop us when our boat is filled with people. Not when we are shipping merchandise."

Iran's Revolutionary Guards navy is also present in the waters and has its headquarters in this port city, he said. The Iranian Navy operates mainly speedboats with missile launchers mounted on top, intending to swarm much larger American Navy ships with dozens of such boats in case of a confrontation.

Such conflict has happened before, and a defeat prompted Iran to change its navy's military doctrine. During a one-day conflict in these waters in 1988 between Iran and the United States, one Iranian frigate was sunk, while Iranian forces claimed to have brought down an American helicopter. Some months later, an American Navy ship shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290 people, an event that Iran commemorated on Monday. The country maintains the plane was deliberately shot down, while the United States says it was an accident.

The prospect of a confrontation now could grow as the pressure builds on Iran while the sanctions, and dropping oil prices, cut deeper into Tehran's financial lifeline.

Oil prices have fallen by nearly 10 percent since the beginning of the year - and roughly 20 percent from their peak in March - because of weakening demand from Europe, the United States and parts of the developing world, as well as increased production from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya. Oil experts estimate that Iran's oil export revenues are down about 35 percent compared with the beginning of the year.

Increasingly, Iran's officials are warning its citizens to prepare for tough times ahead. On Monday, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's foreign minister, made comparisons to the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq when he discussed with reporters the mounting pressures on Iran.

Iran's vice president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, speaking during a religious conference on Sunday, said his country would never be stopped, and he asked for people's support, state television reported. "Today, we are facing the heaviest of sanctions, and we ask people to help officials in this battle," he said.

Aboard the Neptune, the crew knew what that meant: killing more time baby-sitting for crude at sea. On Sunday, members of the crew trudged out beneath a blazing sun and hauled up the anchor. They knew they were not going anywhere, but they took the opportunity to clean off the rust. Then they shouted to passengers in a skiff below, trying to make a joke.

"Wait five minutes," a sailor said. "When we drop anchor again, you'll get great pictures."

Bron: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/oil-embargo-leads-iran-to-disguise-tankers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Citaat van: Enforcer op 05/07/2012 | 09:14 uur
Het zou mij niets verbazen als Israel tegen de USA gezegd heeft dat ze gaan aanvallen, maar dat ze nog geen datum genoemd hebben.

Of inclusief datum.

Enforcer

Citaat van: jurrien visser op 04/07/2012 | 10:26 uur
US moves military to Gulf

Washington, July 03, 2012

The US has moved more warships and fighter aircraft to the Persian Gulf to keep the strategic Straits of Hormuz open and strike deep within Iran if the stand-off over its nuclear programme escalates.

Quoting senior American officials, The New York Times said the new deployment to bolster military presence in the gulf is aimed at reassuring Israel that Washington is serious about neutralising Iran's nuclear ambitions.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Americas/US-moves-military-to-Gulf/Article1-882881.aspx

Het zou mij niets verbazen als Israel tegen de USA gezegd heeft dat ze gaan aanvallen, maar dat ze nog geen datum genoemd hebben.

Lex

Citaat van: Elzenga op 04/07/2012 | 22:21 uur
Citaat van: jurrien visser op 04/07/2012 | 22:17 uur
Los van politieke redenen: wat is ook al weer "the window of opportunity"?
Vlak voor de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen bijvoorbeeld....en dan zien hoe Obama reageert. Zou nog zo maar eens de Republikeinen de winst kunnen opleveren als Obama niet stevig optreedt...gezien de grote populariteit van Israel in de States (als ik het goed heb begrepen).
Jurriën stelt de vraag los van politieke redenen. M.i. is jouw antwoord gebaseerd op politieke redenen.

Jah

#517
Citaat van: Ros op 04/07/2012 | 21:54 uur
Of neemt Israel in de nabije toekomst de gok dat Uncle Sam wel zal komen helpen als Israel een aanval doet ?.

Het heeft inderdaad de steun van Amerika nodig, maar Israel weet ook dat de VS bij zal moeten springen mocht Israel tot eenzijdige actie overgaan. Daar bestaat geen twijfel over. Het zal wellicht een diplomatieke rel veroorzaken, maar 'In the heat of the moment' zal de VS Israel onvoorwaardelijk steunen. Je kan daarom stellen dat Israel de VS in een soort morele gijzeling heeft. Wat Mearsheimer en Walt ook wel als 'the tail wagging the dog' beschreven. Het is niet de hond die de staart beweegt, maar andersom.

Elzenga

Citaat van: jurrien visser op 04/07/2012 | 22:17 uur
Los van politieke redenen: wat is ook al weer "the window of opportunity"?
Vlak voor de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen bijvoorbeeld....en dan zien hoe Obama reageert. Zou nog zo maar eens de Republikeinen de winst kunnen opleveren als Obama niet stevig optreedt...gezien de grote populariteit van Israel in de States (als ik het goed heb begrepen).

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Citaat van: Elzenga op 04/07/2012 | 22:04 uur
Citaat van: Ros op 04/07/2012 | 21:54 uur
Of neemt Israel in de nabije toekomst de gok dat Uncle Sam wel zal komen helpen als Israel een aanval doet ?.
Daar zullen ze of vanuit gaan....of zal al de bedoeling zijn...of zal het gevolg worden van een eenzijdige Israelische aanval. In die zin heeft Israel de VS mijns inziens in de tang en moet de VS veel drukmiddelen gebruiken om Israel in toom te houden en tegemoet te komen. De grote vraag is wat men te winnen heeft bij zo'n aanval en de oorlog die daarop zal volgen. Ik zie voor met name rechts Israel de nodige voordelen (om wat problemen "op te lossen"). Maar misschien wacht men daar even af of Obama opnieuw president wordt of dat er een meer meewerkende Republikein aan de macht komt in de VS.

Los van politieke redenen: wat is ook al weer "the window of opportunity"?

Elzenga

Citaat van: Ros op 04/07/2012 | 21:54 uur
Of neemt Israel in de nabije toekomst de gok dat Uncle Sam wel zal komen helpen als Israel een aanval doet ?.
Daar zullen ze of vanuit gaan....of zal al de bedoeling zijn...of zal het gevolg worden van een eenzijdige Israelische aanval. In die zin heeft Israel de VS mijns inziens in de tang en moet de VS veel drukmiddelen gebruiken om Israel in toom te houden en tegemoet te komen. De grote vraag is wat men te winnen heeft bij zo'n aanval en de oorlog die daarop zal volgen. Ik zie voor met name rechts Israel de nodige voordelen (om wat problemen "op te lossen"). Maar misschien wacht men daar even af of Obama opnieuw president wordt of dat er een meer meewerkende Republikein aan de macht komt in de VS.

Ros

Of neemt Israel in de nabije toekomst de gok dat Uncle Sam wel zal komen helpen als Israel een aanval doet ?.

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Citaat van: Elzenga op 04/07/2012 | 21:42 uur
Weinig verrassend nieuws....lijkt me een logische reactie. Omgekeerd zou men hetzelfde doen.

Idd weinig nieuws onder de zon. Wel blijven de Amerikanen op alle fronten versterkingen aanvoeren, voor wat het waard is (op dit moment)