Amid Tensions With Tehran, US Displays Naval Power In Gulf

NUKEWARS

The USS John Stennis.

by Jim Mannion
Washington (AFP) May 23, 2007
The US Navy kicked off its largest display of naval power in the Gulf in years Wednesday, amid rising tensions with Iran over its clandestine support for Iraqi extremists and unchecked nuclear program. Two US aircraft carriers sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf along with a helicopter carrier and amphibious assault ships carrying an estimated 2,200 marines, the US Navy said.

"We do maritime security operations here to reassure friends in the region of our commitment, and certainly this is a viable commitment and a visible one that helps security and stability in the waters here," said Commander Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

The carriers USS John Stennis and USS Nimitz will exercise together in the Gulf and the Stennis will conduct air operations in support of US forces in Iraq, Aandahl said.

With them is the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship that carries helicopters and a contingent of marines who will unload their equipment and conduct exercises in Kuwait.

"From a historic point of view we haven't done this type of operation with this number of ships in a couple of years at least," Aandahl said. "I guess what's significant here is them all coming at the same time."

Aandahl said the display of naval power was not directed at any country.

But the warships' arrival came just hours before the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report declaring that Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment program in defiance of UN sanctions.

Tensions are flaring on other fronts as well, notably in Iraq where an increasingly bitter struggle is underway between US forces and Iranian operatives, even as Tehran and Washington prepare to hold talks on Iraq in Baghdad on May 28.

ABC television, citing US intelligence officials, said Tuesday that US President George W. Bush has authorized a covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian regime by non-lethal means such as propaganda broadcasts and manipulation of Iran's currency.

"As a matter of course we don't comment on allegations of covert activities," said Central Intelligence Agency spokesman Mark Mansfield.

Iran, meanwhile, is reported to have detained a fourth US-Iranian national, raising the stakes in a long simmering dispute with Washington over five Iranians captured by US forces in Iraq.

Iran is demanding the release of the five, who it says are diplomats, but the United States has refused, charging that they were part of a ring supplying explosives meant to kill US soldiers.

Senior US officials have said that Iranian-made armor-penetrating explosives have gone not just to Shiites but to some Sunni extremists in Iraq as well.

"We now have some very credible intelligence based on both debriefings of individuals we have captured and other sources that now confirm there are Sunni extremist elements that are, in fact, being funded by Iranian intelligence agents. And they are also providing some training for them too," Major General William Caldwell, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, said in an interview with CNN.

A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP an Iranian goal appears to be to drive up casualties to influence the US debate over whether to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

More broadly, Iran's strategy over the past couple of years has been to weaken the US position in the region by bogging it down in an unstable, ungovernable Iraq.

But top administration officials, while decrying Iranian behavior and stepping up their military presence in the Gulf, have insisted the last thing they want is a military confrontation.

"Senior State Department officials recognize that a military confrontation with Iran is unlikely to improve the nuclear issue, it's unlikely to improve Iranians' regional behavior, and its highly unlikely to lead to a stabilization of Iraq," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert the with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Sadjadpour believes the United States is trying to nudge Tehran onto a more moderate path by showing that "if they take a belligerent approach it is going to beget a hardline approach."

"But I don't think they've properly convinced Iranian moderates that a conciliatory Iranian approach will get a conciliatory American response," he told AFP.

Source: Agence France-Presse

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North Korea Bank Settlement Taking Too Long Says South Korea

Seoul (AFP) May 23, 2007
Negotiatiors are moving towards settlement of a banking dispute blocking North Korea's nuclear disarmament but cannot say when it will be resolved, South Korea's foreign minister said Wednesday. "The process of resolving technical problems is moving toward the direction we are aiming at, but its pace is not as fast as we had hoped," Song Min-Soon told reporters.

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