Free Republic

The mullahs are playing with fire in Strait of HormuzThe leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran continue to rattle their scimitars, threatening a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Bring it on. Iran is under increasing pressure to abandon its nuclear program. The United States is about to ban commerce with Iran's central bank. The European Union is considering a new round of economic sanctions and joining the U.S. oil embargo against Iran. Saudi Arabia has decided to increase production to fill the gap should Europeans stop buying Iranian oil. In response, Tehran is threatening to stop all Persian...

TEHRAN (FNA) - Senior Iranian commanders revealed on Friday that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy and the US navy ships have entered several armed clashes and confrontations in the Persian Gulf since 1986. "During the 8-year long sacred defense (against the Iraqi invasion from 1980 to 1988) we were defending against the Iraqis who were the endpoint of the arrow of the world arrogance (the US), but in the last one and a half years of the war, we were in vast and direct confrontation with the Americans in the Persian Gulf," IRGC Navy Commander General Ali Fadavi...

NEW YORK - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called on NATO naval forces to withdraw from the Gulf, calling them a threat to security.

Iran Plans to Equip Submarines with Advanced Missile-Launchers TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior commander of the Iranian Army's naval force announced on Sunday that the country plans to equip its submarines and other underwater vessels with home-made missile-launching systems. Due to submarines' limitations for firing torpedoes, "we have decided to equip our submarines with missile-launching systems, which of course needs a highly complicated technology and know-how," Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army Rear Admiral Farhad Amiri told FNA. "To fire a missile from a submarine, the target and missile-launch specifications should be sent to the submarine very fast, and this communication...

Tiny Qatar Flexes Muscles In No-Fly Libya Campaign by The Associated Press SOUDA BAY AIR BASE, Greece March 28, 2011, 10:49 am ET In Libya's skies, Qatar is punching above its weight. From an air base in Crete, the tiny Persian Gulf nation has started its biggest, farthest combat deployment — including a third of its fighter-jet fleet — and given the first Arab face to the Western-led coalition hoping to protect Libyan civilians from Moammar Gadhafi's firepower. For the oil- and gas-rich country that brought the world Al-Jazeera TV and recently won the right to host the 2022 World...

Fighter market heats up in the Gulf David Donald Sunday, 20 February, 2011 In recent times, the focus of the world’s fighter manufacturers has been distracted away from the Gulf region to the major competitions in Brazil and India. However, the announcement towards the end of last year of a huge potential order by Saudi Arabia served as a reminder that the Middle East remains a market offering enormous potential, as several Gulf States seek to further modernise their fighter forces. Last October, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) released details of a proposed sale of vast proportions to...

'Iran navy to build new destroyers' An Iranian destroyer (file photo) Iranian Navy's Deputy Commander Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Khadem Bigham says the navy aims to build new destroyers with state-of-the-art design and defense systems. “The assembly line for the production of missile-launching frigates with advanced systems and modern features have been set up,” IRNA quoted Rear Admiral Bigham as saying on Friday. He hailed the country's first domestically-build and developed guided missile destroyer Jamaran and said, “The military capabilities … need to meet our defense requirements to protect the Islamic Republic's interests against aerial, surface and sub-surface threats.” Last February,...

  "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, God with us. ... Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." — George Frideric Handel, "Messiah" WASHINGTON — This magnificent musical work penned by Handel in 1741 is heard all around the world in this season. His powerful lyrics are drawn directly from the Bible and remind us all to be thankful for the birth, sacrifice and resurrection of the Lamb of God.In our family Christmas tradition, Handel's oratorio is performed at our Christmas Eve...

Bahrain and Dubai are expecting to get more MGM-164 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Last week the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified the U.S. Congress about the planned sale of 130 ATACMS missiles carrying Unitary Warheads T2K (MGM-164), equipping the two gulf states with medium range ballistic missile capability for the first time. According to the agency, the United Arab Emirates’ Army will get 100 ATACMS missiles while Bahrain buy additional 30. The recent announcement includes only missiles, but no launchers, as both countries already have the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) in service.

France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is now en route to the region and will arrive there at the end of October, when a quarter of the world's nuclear aircraft carriers will gather in the stratgeic waters. The French carrier is accompanied by two frigates, an attack submarine, a re-fuelling tanker, 3,000 sailors and 27 aircraft. "The force would help allied navies fight piracy off the coast of Somalia and send jets to support NATO in the skies above Afghanistan," said the commander of the group, Rear Admiral Jean-Louis Kerignard. This is while new opinion polls show that a vast...

The United States has posted a second aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf and northern Arabian Sea. The announcement came from the Pentagon Tuesday, Oct. 19, two days after the vessel put into port at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain. DEBKAfile's sources note that this is the first time in two years that Washington had deployed two aircraft carriers at same time - not just one - in waters opposite Iran and Afghanistan.

TOKYO (AFP) – Militant jihadists have claimed that a suicide bomber blew himself up on a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz last week, the US monitoring group SITE said. Mitsui OSK Lines had previously reported that one of its tankers, the M Star, appeared to have been hit by an explosion July 28 in the waterway between Iran and Oman. SITE said the Brigades of Abdullah Azzam claimed in a message on jihadist websites that it had placed a suicide bomber on the tanker, identifying him as Ayyub al-Taishan. It said the attack was carried out in...

There were no U.S. Navy or maritime coalition vessels near a Japanese supertanker damaged in an incident in the Strait of Hormuz, a Fifth Fleet spokesman said. Asked if there were any U.S. navy or coalition vessels close to the supertanker at the time, he said: “No, there were none close to the ship ... none of our vessels were involved.”

MUSCAT/TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese oil tanker damaged in an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important shipping lanes, was being diverted to a port in the UAE on Wednesday. One of the 31 crew aboard was injured but no oil leaked from the M Star very large crude carrier (VLCC), according to the Japanese transport ministry. It said an explosion occurred onboard at around 00:30 a.m. local time (2030 GMT Tuesday), but the cause was unclear. "A crew member saw light on the horizon just before the explosion, so (ship owner Mitsui O.S.K.) believes...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The United Arab Emirates said Friday that a Japanese oil tanker was hit by an explosives-laden dinghy in the Persian Gulf in what would be the first attack in the strategic waterway where millions of barrels of oil are transported each day. The report — which came days after an al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility for attacking the vessel — raised fears about the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for many petroleum exporting countries.

July 23, 2010 Offering to Aid Talks, U.S. Challenges China on Disputed Islands By MARK LANDLER HANOI, Vietnam — Opening a new source of potential friction with China, the Obama administration said Friday that it would step into a tangled dispute between China and its smaller Asian neighbors over a string of strategically significant islands in the South China Sea. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at an Asian regional security meeting in Vietnam, stressed that the United States remained neutral on which regional countries had stronger territorial claims to the islands. But she said that the United States...

The U.S. Navy has extended by one year the time its first high-altitude drone will monitor oil shipments and other maritime activity in the Persian Gulf region, according to officials. Northrop Grumman Corp. built the plane, a demonstration version of its Global Hawk that's used by the Air Force, as the first model in a $9 billion Navy program for 68 unmanned planes to provide reconnaissance in five areas of the world. The aircraft has been flying over the Gulf region since February 2009 and was slated to end its patrols this year to undergo additional stateside testing and development....

The first really clear indication that serious planning was underway to strike at Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons site came a month ago when British news outlets reported that Saudi Arabia had given Israel permission to cross its airspace en route to Iranian targets. Yesterday, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said publicly that his country was willing to live with the consequences of a strike against Iran despite the enormous amount of trade between the two countries and the likelihood of riots after a strike. Today, you have Sen. Joe Lieberman in Israel saying the U.S. would...

BANDAR ABBAS, Iran -- Iranian helicopters scattered flowers into the Persian Gulf waters as family members and relatives remembered the 290 passengers killed when a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian airliner 22 years ago.

Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (CSG) will relieve the Dwight D. Eisenhower CSG as Commander, Task Force 50 July 2, beginning a routine deployment to the U.S. 5th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR). Under Task Force 50, Truman CSG will conduct close air support missions in support of coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan while conducting Maritime Security Operations (MSO) in the AOR. Eisenhower CSG has operated in the 5th Fleet AOR since Jan. 25 with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 7 aircraft flying 2,970 combat sorties and 17,730 cumulative flight hours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)....