Posted on 02/20/2011 2:47:41 PM PST by library user
The passage of two Iranian naval ships through the Suez Canal has been put back to Wednesday, a canal official said on Sunday as Israel expressed its grave concern about the Mediterranean-bound vessels.
"The shipping agent handling the two Iranian warships has told the canal administration to push back their passage by two days," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay, but confirmed that the new day of passage through the waterway that links the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea would be Wednesday.
Reportedly bound for Syria on a journey that would necessarily involve passing Israel, the patrol frigate Alvand and support ship Kharg would be the first Iranian warships through Suez since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Officials at the Egyptian-run canal had previously said privately that they expected the two ships to pass on Monday, just days after the US aircraft carrier Enterprise steamed through Suez in the opposite direction.
In the wake of president Hosni Mubarak's ouster on February 11, Egypt gave its green light on Friday for the Iranian warships to transit the canal into the Mediterranean.
Egypt's official MENA news agency has reported that the request for the ships to transit the Suez Canal said they were not carrying weapons or nuclear and chemical materials.
The 1,500-tonne Alvand is normally armed with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, while the larger 33,000-tonne Kharg has a crew of 250 and facilities for up to three helicopters, Iran's official Fars news agency has said.
Both ships were built in Britain during the 1970s for Iran, which ordered them before the Islamic revolution.
Earlier on Sunday, after a weekly meeting of his cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the ships' arrival in the region as an Iranian power play.
"Today we are witnessing the instability of the region in which we live and in which Iran is trying to profit by extending its influence by dispatching two warships to cross the Suez Canal," he said.
"Israel views with gravity this Iranian initiative and other developments that reinforce what we have said in past years about the Israel's security needs," he added, according to a statement from his office.
Earlier this week, Israel Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called the move a "provocation."
But an Iranian diplomat said: "This will be a routine visit, within international law, in line with the cooperation between Iran and Syria, who have strategic ties."
"The ships will spend a few days in Syrian ports for training purposes," having already visited several countries including Oman and Saudi Arabia," the diplomat added.
“The ships will spend a few years on the bottom of
Syrian ports for IDF Navy underwater training purposes.”
Somebody cue the John Candy quote/jpeg (”She blowed up real good”).
There was some report yesterday that the ships already went thru. While reading it, was thinking they sped up the transit to make it a done deal. I presume now that it was just disinformation.
OK. Let’s make a deal. we’ll leave their world (Arabs and other Islamic countries - e.g. Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia)if they stay out of ours (Western Hemisphere) and Europe, most of Asia and Africa.
The canal passage was just a head fake
The delay is from Iran, the Suez Canal treaty states any ship, military or civilian can pass through the canal at any time. What we see here is the the Iranians milking the news for all it’s worth ......and if their junker warships get sunk, then they can declare war.
This is the class leader of these vessels in the Iranian Navy. They are all really old (built in the 1969-72 timeframe) and as the following description of the very satisfying finale of its sister ship the Sarhand, at the hands of the US Navy, demonstrates absolute sitting ducks for any modern navy: Iranian frigate Sahand (in Persian سهند), a British-made Vosper Mark V class frigate (also known as Alvand class frigate), was commissioned as part of a four-ship order. The ship was originally called Faramarz, named after a character in Ferdosi’s Shahnameh. However after the Islamic Revolution it was renamed Sahand, after the Sahand volcano. The Iranian Navy ship was sunk in Operation Praying Mantis. Located by two American A-6Es of VA-95 steaming roughly ten miles Southwest of Larak Island, she was hit by two Harpoon missiles and two AGM-123 Skipper II laser-guided bombs. A pair of Rockeye cluster bombs from the aircraft and a single Harpoon Missile from the USS Joseph Strauss (DDG-16) finished off the ship. Left heavily aflame, dead in the water and listing to port, the “Sahand” burned for several hours before fire reached her ammunition magazines and detonated, sinking the ship in over 200 meters of water Southwest of Larak Island.
What is more interesting is that Iran is trying to train up a cadre of naval personnel capable of long distance blue water operations. This ship and its accompanying support vessel are going to deploy for a year. While they will temporarily home port in Syria the clear intent is to conduct long distance ocean cruising in the Med. That makes sense for a navy with about zero blue water experience. Any sea has unpredictable and violent weather but the Med is probably about the most stable of all the great seas and oceans and if any big problem occurs , say to the propulsion plant, it is pretty easy to get an ocean tow, or be towed by the support vessel, to some port with overhaul capacity. Bottom line is that this is just the first small toe into the big waters for Iran but I believe they have much grander plans. These include purchase of larger and larger deep water combatants and finding friendly countries where they can use to replenish their support ships while keeping their combatants underway for longer and longer periods. These folks have some really big plans and king sized ambitions and they are definitely out to cause the US as much trouble as possible and to menace Israel with some sort of floating cruise (or in time ballistic) missile launch platforms that will carry nuclear tipped missiles. If the Islamos hold on to power in 10 years they will be a significant naval problem for the US.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.