Massive U.S. war exercises threaten Iran
Massive U.S. war exercises threaten Iran
On March 27, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. had launched its largest naval exercises in the Persian Gulf since the invasion of Iraq.
Two immense aircraft carriers, the USS Eisenhower and the USS Stennis, were steaming off the coast of Iran, each one accompanied by a carrier strike group of vessels and planes. All together, more than 100 planes were involved in this obvious attempt to intimidate the Iranian people with a show of military might.
The magnitude of the operation was sketched by the AP: “Each carrier hosts an air wing of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft, S-3 Viking anti-submarine and refuelers, and E-2C Hawkeye airborne command-and-control craft. Also taking part were guided-missile destroyers USS Anzio, USS Ramage, USS O’Kane, USS Mason, USS Preble and USS Nitze; and minesweepers USS Scout, USS Gladiator and USS Ardent.”
The Eisenhower had moved to the Gulf from the coast of Somalia, where in December it provided cover for an invasion of that country by thousands of Ethiopian troops, coordinated by U.S. special forces. Washington’s objective was to break the political power of the popular Islamic Courts Union and firm up a “transitional government” of discredited “warlords” who had lost control of the country. As usual, the public relations flacks in Washington explained this outright aggression with one pat phrase: the “war on terror.”
Iran must have known that the current exercises were about to take place when on March 23 its navy stopped a vessel in the Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran and detained 15 British sailors and marines.
There are two accounts of why this happened. The U.S.-British account is that the British sailors were in Iraqi waters inspecting civilian ships suspected of smuggling and that the Iranians had no right to detain them.
The Iranian account is that the British had entered Iranian waters. It says the 15 detained sailors and marines have not been harmed but are being questioned to determine whether their violation of Iran’s sea boundaries was “intentional or unintentional.”
Meanwhile, the media in both Britain and the U.S. are pumping up an international crisis over the seizure of the 15. If they report at all on the huge war exercises going on, it is to give the impression that the U.S. is just responding to the “evil bully,” Iran.
How low can the monopolized corporate media go—especially the television “news” programs aimed at a mass audience? Lower than a snake’s belly.
They won’t ask the most elementary questions about this preposterous story, even though the whole world knows by now that the residents of both the White House and Downing Street are a pack of liars.
However, independent-minded people in the West should be able to figure this all out. There is plenty of historical precedent to understand what is going on.
First of all, it makes no sense that Iran would deliberately enter Iraqi waters and seize British naval personnel just as U.S. carriers were bearing down on its coast to carry out war maneuvers. The Iranians know very well that the U.S. is the world’s superpower when it comes to military might and would not help it create a pretext for aggression.
Second, the U.S. and Britain have long been in a partnership to dominate the oil-rich Middle East; it should be remembered that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. once controlled most of Iran’s oil. It DOES make sense that they would concoct a provocation just before the U.S. war maneuvers began.
Third, isn’t it suspicious that the charge against Iran came from London and Washington, not from Baghdad? Didn’t this allegedly happen in Iraqi waters?
Fourth, even though several accounts have appeared in the Western media—including in the series on U.S. military threats against Iran by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine—about U.S. special forces operating clandestinely inside Iran, promoting secessionist groups and gathering intelligence, the Iranian government has so far taken no action that might inflame its already tense relationship with Washington.
Finally, the penetration of a country’s territorial waters by U.S. warships or spying vessels has happened before.
In August 1964, Congress passed a resolution that was later cited by President Lyndon Johnson as his authority to escalate the war in Vietnam. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on a supposed “attack” by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. warships in international waters. Later, with the publication of the Pentagon Papers, this pretext for the war was shown to be totally false.
In January 1968, the ship USS Pueblo and its crew of 83 men were captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea after entering the DPRK’s waters. The U.S. claimed the ship was on an innocent mission—until its captain apologized to the Koreans and admitted publicly that it had been intercepting the Koreans’ electronic communications.
No one outside the U.S./British high command knows where the present crisis is leading. It must not be allowed to become the excuse for an escalation of the imperialist military intervention in the Middle East, which has already brought so much misery and destruction to the region and to the soldiers coerced and tricked into going there.
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