A total of three US warships will patrol the waters surrounding the Strait of Hormuz following confirmation that a third aircraft carrier strike group is being sent to the Arabian Sea as tensions with Iran rise.
“Another carrier strike group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, concluded a port visit to Thailand on Tuesday and was now in the Indian Ocean. It is on track to join the Vinson in the Central Command area of operations, which begins in the neighboring Arabian Sea,” reports Reuters.
The USS Lincoln and the USS Vinson will join the USS John C. Stennis strike group which is already in the region. Pentagon officials state the Stennis is scheduled to return to its home port in San Diego but refused to clarify exactly when this would occur.
The Pentagon’s denial that the movement of the warships has anything to do with Iran’s recent threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, an act that would prompt global economic chaos and provide a pretext for war, holds little credence.
Iran is set to conduct a “massive” new naval drill over the next two weeks that will coincide with a major US/Israeli wargame exercise in the same region, increasing the chances that a war provocation manufactured by either side could take place.
The announcement followed an escalation in rhetoric after the United States sent the massive battleship USS John C. Stennis sailing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz amidst Iranian wargames based around closing the Strait, a key oil choke point.
Iran responded by firing off missiles during the drill and ordering the US aircraft carrier to “stay out of the Persian Gulf”.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
We first reported that the USS Abraham Lincoln was on its way to the troubled region on December 8, noting at the time that the United States had a total of five major aircraft carriers deployed around the world, the same number of warships that were in action shortly before the invasion of Iraq in early 2003.
In a related development, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev told Russian news agency Interfax that Israeli pressure on the United States to attack Iran was building.
“There is a likelihood of a military conflict escalation, to which the Americans are being pushed by Israel,” he said, adding that economic sanctions by the west, which have caused the rial to plunge against the dollar, could be part of an effort to provoke instability and precipitate a “color revolution” that would lead to an overthrow of the Ahmadinejad regime.
Tensions went up another notch yesterday after terrorists assassinated yet another Iranian nuclear expert. Israeli sources confirm the car bomb attack in Tehran which killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was jointly carried out by the US-backed MEK terror group and the Israeli Mossad.
No comments:
Post a Comment