Drumbeats of War - Iran, the New Superpower
Perhaps that headline seems a little overblown and surprising, but what is most surprising about it is that it accurately describes the path Iran has chosen.
As Vin Scully, famed announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers used to say, “It’s a whole new ball game.”
Iran is holding its largest naval exercises ever, over a period of eight days. Along with the usual testing of weapons and gauging the efficiency of the ships’ crews, an entirely new dimension has been added. In fact, the testing and the efficiency trials will come in the second and third phases of the exercise. The brand new part came first, and it was breath taking.
“Passing ships were successfully checked by destroyers, frigates, special operation teams and naval commandos in line with the goal of establishing security and peace in transit routes bound for the Hormuz Strait and the Persian Gulf,” said Iran’s Rear Admiral Qasem Rostamabadi yesterday.
This is what superpowers do. This is what the United States has traditionally done in this area.
Iran is planning for the time when they, not the US, will be doing this.
More than planning. They are getting ready to actually do it. They have, in fact started doing it. They have begun taking control of the shipping lanes that see a little less than half of the world’s oil pass through daily.
Consider the name of the exercise. It is said to be “The Last Prophet” or “Judgement Day”, in English. I could not find the actual name in the original language, but I suppose it reference the Mahdi, which is the prophesied redeemer of Islam who comes just before the final day of judgement, in both Shia and Sunni sects of Islam.
This is very, very heavy stuff. The Mahdi is a driving motivation for religious Islamic people, and President Ahmadinejad of Iran counts himself among their numbers. There is a photo of him reading the Koran in the airport before he attended the Non Proliferation Treaty meeting, at which he took an unshakable stand that Iran had the right to become a nuclear nation.
Which leads us to the other phases of the drill, namely “the detection and subsequent destruction of marine and submarine targets as well as conducting rescue drills for chemical, biological and nuclear strikes,” and “tactical operations, test-firing of surface-to-surface, land-to-surface and undersurface missiles. Tens of destroyers, frigates and naval helicopters will participate in this part of the drill,” according to the official Iranian new agency.
In short, they are ready and apparently willing for the new Middle East war to begin.
An op-ed piece in Jerusalem Post say bluntly that America has dropped the ball, President Obama is out of his depth, and the only solution is a military one. If the Israeli government shares that belief, the days of peace are numbered. I do not believe anyone in the region sees the indirect talks to begin discussing the possibility of starting to talk… has any real chance of success.
Unless someone pulls a big rabbit out of a big hat, it is a shadow play, acquiesced to grudgingly by both Arabs and Israelis for the sole purpose of placating the Obama administration.
Sanctions are being dilly-dallied at the UN, with Russia backing away without a heavy quid pro quo from the US to allow wide export of Russian military products. Even then, they require the sanctions ‘do no harm to the Iranian people’. Which rules out an embargo on petroleum products, the cornerstone of the ‘crippling’ or ‘biting’ sanctions Clinton promised and Israel requires in return for their waiting a little longer before launching a preemptive strike against Iran. As usual, China is dancing to their own tune.
Optimistic estimates put any agreement on sanctions sometime in June. Maybe. Israel was promised no later than the first week in May. Which has passed.
And… of course you noticed the shock and awful decline of stock markets throughout the world last week. Global Dow dropped from about 2000 to just over 1800. MarketWatch says the ‘fear factor’ of investors has skyrocketed. I’ve noticed the powers-that-be tend to increase fear factor in the population to get us ready to fall in line behind whatever war is coming up.
Next week may see the market climb back up a bit… or the top-heavy debts of the nations of the world may finally be too much for the world economy to bear. The Great Depression came as the press was declaring an end to the recession the nation was going through. Sound familiar?
Does it yet make sense to you to buy emergency food and supplies while you still have some money? I’ve already gone that route, so i have no compunction about recommending it. It helps me sleep well at night.
Check out Nitro-Pak and also read, if you have not yet done so, the category pages of this website. If you ever need that knowledge… and you probably will, one way or another… now is the best time to start learning it.
PS… Radio Free Europe belittles the Iranian naval forces by saying, “Much of Iran’s navy is seriously outdated and lacks spare parts. Some ships are more than 40-years old and were built in the United States and Britain before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.”
The workhorse of the US Air Force, the venerable B-52 series of bombers that made history again during the Gulf Wars, was first put into service in 1955. That’s 55 years ago. And ships usually have a longer service life than airplanes.
We would do well not to underestimate Iran. Okay, a superpower they aren’t. Yet. But underneath all that bluster is an ancient nation, formerly called Persia, with a long tradition of being highly intelligent, world-class engineers. They might surprise our planners if we’re not careful. Btw, Iranian President Ahmadinejad has a doctorate in engineering.
It would not be the first time God has used the Persians to chastise his own people.
