Aug 22, 2006 Iran attacked and
seized control of a Romanian oil rig working in its Persian Gulf waters. The Iranians
fired at the rig's crane with machine guns. The Romanian company has 26 workers on the
platform. Iran urged the United Arab Emirates last week to help it return another oil rig
owned and operated by the Romanian company in the same waters close to the Straits of
Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's daily oil supply moves on tankers.
July 3, 2006 WASHINGTON - The U.S. Navy's top commander in the
Gulf told Reuters in an interview that the U.S. military would ensure the free flow
of oil and trade through the Strait of Hormuz sea corridor if passage was threatened.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned last month that oil exports in the
Gulf region could be seriously endangered if Washington made a wrong move over Iran.
Iranian officials have in the past ruled out using oil as a weapon in the nuclear standoff
with the West, but Khamenei's comments suggest Iran could change tack if pushed. In April,
Iran staged naval wargames in the Gulf and tested a "super-modern flying boat"
and the land-to-sea Kowsar missile that military analysts say is designed to sink ships
and threaten passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
March 2006- Iran's Revolutionary Guards are making
preparations for a massive assault on U.S. naval forces and international shipping in the
Persian Gulf, according to a former Iranian intelligence officer who defected to the West
in 2001.
The plans, which include the use of bottom-tethered mines potentially capable of
destroying U.S. aircraft carriers, were designed to counter a U.S. land invasion and to
close the Strait of Hormuz, the defector said in a phone interview from his home in
Europe. They would also be triggered if the United States or Israel launched a pre-emptive
strike on Iran to knock out nuclear and missile facilities. "The plan is to stop
trade," the source said.
Between 15 and 16.5 million barrels of oil transit the Strait of Hormuz each day, roughly
20 percent of the world's daily oil production, according to the U.S. government's Energy
Information Administration.
The source provided NewsMax parts of a more than 30-page contingency plan, which bears the
stamp of the Strategic Studies Center of the Iranian Navy, NDAJA. The document appears to
have been drafted in Sept or Oct of 2005
ARCHIVES - STRAIT OF HORMUZ - On 18 April 1988, the U.S. Navy waged a
one-day battle against Iranian forces in and around the strait. The battle, dubbed
Operation Praying Mantis by the U.S. side, was launched in retaliation for the April 14th
mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts. U.S. forces sank 2 Iranian warships and 6 armed
speedboats in the engagement.
The NDAJA document was just one part of a larger strike plan to
be coordinated by a single operational headquarters that would integrate Revolutionary
Guards missile units, strike aircraft, surface and underwater naval vessels,
Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines, coastal artillery, as well
as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The overall plans are being coordinated by the intelligence office of the Ministry of
Defense, known as HFADA.
Revolutionary Guards missile units have identified "more than 100 targets, including
Saudi oil production and oil export centers," the defector said. "They have more
than 45 to 50 Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles ready for shooting" against those
targets and against Israel, he added.
The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, warned the CIA in July 2001 that Iran was preparing a
massive attack on America using Arab terrorists flying airplanes, which he said was
planned for Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA dismissed his claims and called him a fabricator.
The source also identified a previously unknown nuclear weapons site last year to this
writer, which was independently confirmed by three separate intelligence agencies.
NewsMax showed the defector's documents to two native Persian-speakers who each have more
than 20 years of experience analyzing intelligence documents from the Islamic Republic
regime. They believed the documents were authentic.
A U.S. military intelligence official, while unable to authenticate the documents without
seeing them, recognized the Strategic Studies Center and noted that the individual whose
name appears as the author of the plan, Abbas Motaj, was head of the Iranian navy until
late 2005.
A former Revolutionary Guards officer, contacted by NewsMax in Europe, immediately
recognized the Naval Strategic Studies institute from its Persian-language acronym, NDAJA.
He provided independent information on recent deployments of Shahab-3 missiles that
coincided with information contained in the NDAJA plan.
The Iranian contingency plan is summarized in an "Order of Battle" map, which
schematically lays out Iran's military and strategic assets and how they will be used
against U.S. military forces from the Strait of Hormuz up to Busheir.
The map identifies three major areas of operations, called "mass kill zones,"
where Iranian strategists believe they can decimate a U.S.-led invasion force before it
actually enters the Persian Gulf.
The kill zones run from the low-lying coast just to the east of Bandar Abbas, Iran's main
port that sits in the bottleneck of the Strait of Hormuz, to the ports of Jask and Shah
Bahar on the Indian Ocean, beyond the Strait.
Behind the kill zones are strategic missile launchers labeled as "area of chemical
operations," "area of biological warfare operations," and "area where
nuclear operations start."
Iran's overall battle management will be handled through C4I and surveillance satellites.
It is unclear in the documents shared with NewsMax whether this refers to commercial
satellites or satellite intelligence obtained from allies, such as Russia or China. Iran
has satellite cooperation programs with both nations.
The map is labeled "the current status of military forces in the Persian Gulf and the
Strait of Hormuz, 1384." 1384 is the Iranian year that ends on March 20, 2006.
Iran plans to begin offensive operations by launching successive waves of
explosives-packed boats against U.S. warships in the Gulf, piloted by "Ashura"
or suicide bombers.
The first wave can draw on more than 1,000 small fast-attack boats operated by the
Revolutionary Guards navy, equipped with rocket launchers, heavy machine-guns and possibly
Sagger anti-tank missiles.
In recent years, the Iranians have used these small boats to practice
"swarming" raids on commercial vessels and U.S. warships patrolling the Persian
Gulf.
The White House listed two such attacks in the list of 10 foiled al-Qaida
terrorist attacks it released on Feb. 10.
The attacks were identified as a "plot by al-Qaida operatives to attack ships in the
[Persian] Gulf" in early 2003, and a separate plot to "attack ships in the
Strait of Hormuz."
A second wave of suicide attacks would be carried out by "suicide submarines"
and semi-submersible boats, before Iran deploys its Russian-built Kilo-class submarines
and Chinese-built Huodong missile boats to attack U.S. warships, the source said. The
114-foot Chinese boats are equipped with advanced radar-guided C-802s, a sea-skimming
cruise-missile with a 60-mile range against which many U.S. naval analysts believe there
is no effective defense.
When Iran first tested the sea-launched C-802s a decade ago, Vice Admiral Scott Redd, then
commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf, called them "a new dimension ... of the
Iranian threat to shipping."
Admiral Redd was appointed to head the National Counterterrorism Center last year.
Iran's naval strategists believe the U.S. will attempt to land ground forces to the east
of Bandar Abbas. Their plans call for extensive use of ground-launched tactical missiles,
coastal artillery, as swell as strategic missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia and Israel tipped
with chemical, biological and possibly nuclear warheads.
The Iranians also plan to lay huge minefields across the Persian Gulf inside the Strait of
Hormuz, effectively trapping ships that manage to cross the Strait before they can enter
the Gulf, where they can be destroyed by coastal artillery and land-based
"Silkworm" missile batteries.
Today, Iran has sophisticated EM-53 bottom-tethered mines, which it purchased from China
in the 1990s. The EM-53 presents a serious threat to major U.S. surface vessels, since its
rocket-propelled charge is capable of hitting the hull of its target at speeds in excess
of 70 miles per hour. Some analysts believe it can knock out a U.S. aircraft carrier.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff has been warning about Iran's growing naval buildup in the
Persian Gulf for over a decade, and in a draft presidential finding submitted to President
Clinton in late February 1995, concluded that Iran already had the capability to close the
Strait of Hormuz.
"I think it would be problematic for any navy to face a combination of mines, small
boats, anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedoes, coastal artillery, and Silkworms," said
retired Navy Commander Joseph Tenaglia, CEO of Tactical Defense Concepts, a maritime
security company. "This is a credible threat."
In Tenaglia's view, "the major problem will be the mines. Naval minefields are hard
to locate and to sweep," and the United States has few minesweepers. "It's going
to be like running the gauntlet getting through there," he said.
When Iran last mined the Gulf, in 1987-1988, several U.S. ships and reflagged Kuwaiti oil
tankers were hit, even though the mines they used were similar to those used in the Battle
of Gallipoli in 1915, Tenaglia said.
The biggest challenge facing Iran today would be to actually lay the mines without getting
caught. "If they are successful in getting mines into the water, it's going to take
us months to get them out," Tenaglia said.
Iran Readies Plan to Close Strait of Hormuz Kenneth R. Timmerman, NewsMax.com Wednesday,
March 1, 2006
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/28/181730.shtml?s=lh
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