The Situation With Iran and the Strait of Hormuz

Big_Zucchini

Well-Known Member
Israeli Television: Israel said resigned to nuke deal that won't address terror and strategic weapons, with minor improvements over the last.


This policy was expected of the Biden administration. And now it seems the US may have put enough pressure on Israel to back down from its previous demands.
That is at least the surface.
What it usually is, is an arrangement, a bi-lateral exchange rather than one frowning upon the other.
This may have implications on the covert inter-war campaign between Israel and Iran, which the US is known to have taken part in, and may still take part on some level.

Off-topic but directly related to these news, if the mods do not mind.
This will again increase the military pressure on Israel from Iran. There has already been debate, mostly speculations, that the democratic party will condition the military aid Israel receives (as part of the peace with Egypt and Jordan, and compensation for American arms sales to Arab states), on falling in line with American demands on foreign policy matters.
Since Israel's total defense expenditure will have to rise to meet the new threat posed by Iran, future administrations will have to be far more careful when they approach this topic, if the speculations end up fulfilling themselves.

This will also put to the test Biden's promise to remove American troops from the middle east. Their removal has to be done carefully to make sure no instability manifests in the vacuum they leave. As Iran seeks to undo American progress in the region, withdrawing now will be more difficult than at any point during the 2nd half of the Trump admin, when sanctions were fully restored.
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
Channel 9 has not proven to be reliable, and it does not provide its source for the information.
Russian navy ships have already been escorting Iranian tankers for many months, including when some of the more recent attacks have occurred.
That's good to know. It was news to me. It looked like a new development, but I guess not.
 

OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Aug 2021 Update — Part 1

1. Forces loyal to Iran hijacks yet another civilian vessel. The Asphalt Princess was just innocently trading in the region before this crime was committed.

2. I am working on the assumption that 8 to 9 armed Iranians have boarded the vessel. At this stage a military led crisis management of this is still possible. Given that this ship is UAE operated but Panama flagged, I do expect a military type crisis response to this latest attack by Iranian forces, as there are forces within reach before it reaches an Iranian port.
 
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ngatimozart

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
1. Forces loyal to Iran hijacks yet another civilian vessel. The Asphalt Princess was just innocently trading in the region before this crime was committed.

2. I am working on the assumption that 8 to 9 armed Iranians have boarded the vessel. At this stage a military led crisis is still possible. Given that this ship is UAE operated but Panama flagged, I do expect a military type crisis response to this latest attack by Iranian forces, as there are forces within reach before it reaches an Iranian port.
IRGC.
 

OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Aug 2021 Update — Part 2

3. At this time, at least 4 vessels may have been disabled (unconfirmed)— with the Asphalt Princess hijacked (confirmed)— in the main shipping channel through the Strait of Hormuz. An Oman Royal Air Force C-295MPA, a MPA, flew in circles for hours over the waters, according to data from FlightRadar24.com. If this is an Iranian military operation, it likely to be led by the IRCG, conducting armed hostilities in civilian clothes, using non-military assets. This is why I said “Forces loyal to Iran,” in point 1 above.

4. If this turns out to be accurate, the Islamic Republic has attempted to use sea mines to close the strait and so to strangle the flow of petroleum to global markets in the most dramatic offensive escalation in this vital shipping way since 1988. The timing of the action is no accident, as last month, Ebrahim Raisi has been inaugurated as Iran's New President and the country also announced it would be making its first oil shipment (to China), from its new terminal at Jask Port on the Gulf of Oman — its first such facility south of Hormuz.

5. Since 2019, the waters off Fujairah have experienced a series of explosions and hijackings. The US Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers — so it is not a new phenomenon.
(a) Given that securing the Strait of Hormuz is no longer a vital national-security imperative for the US, the US Navy will not be conducting Operation Praying Mathis 2.0.​
(b) But it does not follow that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his boss will allow this provocation to go unanswered — in his roles in the NSC under Obama and as deputy secretary of state, Blinken advocated for more robust U.S. involvement in the Syria conflict, and notably broke with his boss, Biden, to support the armed intervention in Libya. He was also a close aide to Biden when the then-senator supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.​
(c) The US Secretary of State continues to believe that diplomacy needs to be “supplemented by deterrence” and “force can be a necessary adjunct to effective diplomacy. IMO, Blinken will be able to gather like minded allies and partners to address this threat.​

6. Prior to this hijack, MT Mercer Street, a tanker that sails under the Liberian flag and has a Japanese owner — was attacked by two drones off the coast of Oman —attack was designed to be merciless: one of drones was directly aimed at tanker's bridge, to kill people, because it was in retaliation for 24 Apr 2021 attack off Baniyas against Lebanese/Iranian product carrier Wisdom. Israel blames Iran for attack on MT Mercer Street that killed a Briton and a Romanian. MT Mercer Street is operated by Zodiac Maritime, a London-based company that belongs to the Israeli Eyal Ofer, a billionaire real estate and shipping magnate.

P.S. MT Mercer Street is not an Israeli owned vessel. The ship is owned by the Japanese, flying the Liberian flag, operated by a company based in Britain which happens to be owned by an Israeli businessman. No Israelis were hurt, as it is not an Israeli ship. Meanwhile, in this attack, Iran killed a Britain and a Romanian. The mis-identification and attack on the boxship CSAV Tyndall (a vessel previously owned by Israeli shipowner Eyal Ofer) and the targeting of the MT Mercer Street, indicates a deep-rooted recklessness and lack of basic intelligence collection capability at an institutional level within Iran.
 
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OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Aug 2021 Update — Part 3

7. US Navy had repositioned at destroyer in the general vicinity of the Asphalt Princess to keep a closer eye, U.S. officials say. The officials add this is to monitor the situation rather than any imminent military moves.

8. MT Asphalt Princess, owned by Dubai-based Prime Tanker LLC, has been released upon the arrival of a US Navy destroyer on the scene. These armed men loyal to Iran fled (after the arrival of military forces on the scene to monitor the situation).
 
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OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Tankers engaged in sanctioned Iranian oil trades

1. The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control targets Omani national Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi and a network of businesses, two based in Oman, one based in Liberia and one based in Romania for providing support to Iran’s Quds Force.

2. Guyana has become the latest identified registry from Caribbean, African or Pacific countries targeted by flag-hopping tankers engaged in sanctioned Iranian oil trades. A 2000-built aframax tanker Winsome (IMO: 9192260) moved to the registry earlier this month.

3. The tanker, Winsome (IMO: 9192260) has been changed names four times and reflagged three times in the past 13 months, is the second of 160 vessels tracked by Lloyd’s List shipping US-sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran without penalty to use Guyana’s registry.

4. An aframax tanker, Winsome (IMO: 9192260) has been missing for more than a month after loading a $30m cargo of crude oil in Oman bound for China — Iran, Oman and China all in the same story. From the surface, it looks like IRGC stole a tanker in Oman’s waters with cargo on-board that may belong to a SOE in China but there may be a backstory we don’t know about.
 
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ngatimozart

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
4. An aframax tanker, Winsome (IMO: 9192260) has been missing for more than a month after loading a $30m cargo of crude oil in Oman bound for China — Iran, Oman and China all in the same story. From the surface, it looks like IRGC stole a tanker in Oman’s waters with cargo on-board that belongs to China but there may be a backstory we don’t know about.
The PRC won't take to kindly to that if they weren't in on it. They definitely won't have a sense of humour about that at all.
 
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Big_Zucchini

Well-Known Member
I dont know if this is the right thread to post this video, but the Iranians just uploaded a interesting live fire exercise video.

On internet people already geolocated the area of the exercise.
Just propaganda. Dimona is much more a symbolic target than a real one, and hundreds if not thousands more targets far more valuable than it. Iran will not waste its few missiles on a reactor that doesn't really produce anymore. The absurdity is they keep sending construction workers to the middle of nowhere to build these things.

Ironically it would probably have a much better effect if they made some concrete targets and showed impacts and penetration capabilities. That would make their missiles feared.
 

STURM

Well-Known Member
What you said about Dimona is true. The Iranians would be better off conserving missiles for targets like airfields and bases - I supect they will. A strike on Dimona [assuming the.missiles hit] will be politically symbolic but that's it.
 
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