First he was reassigned. Now a principal who refused to call the Holocaust a 'factual, historic event' will lose his job.
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Who controls the seas control the destinies of others. (See 1 below.)
And:
Another way to look at foreign-born populations and community issues. (See 1a below.)
Finally:
I posted this previously but find it even more prophetic today. When and what shape will the next civil war take? (See 1b below.)
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Iran's tests Britain, America's and the world's resolve regarding open shipping in Hormuz? (See 2 below.)
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Yesterday, I had lunch with an assembled group of friends and one of the participants was a refugee from Cuba. His family were forced to leave when he was 5. At the time, they were prominent citizens of Cuba and the government seized all their extensive property and possessions. He and his brother became imminent financial successes.
I have another family living in Atlanta, who are very dear friends. They have a similar story, fled to America and became successes in the field of medicine. Their children have become highly successful, as well, as have their productive grandchildren.
The Cuban refugee population changed the face of Miami and Florida and now refugees from Venezuela are having their impact. They are likely to help Trump retain Florida because they resent the current way Democrats have failed to resolve our immigration mess and how their court appointed judges have thwarted whatever Trump has sought.
My lunch friend understands, full well, the nature of Communism having experienced it first hand. In fact a member of his family still remains in Cuba because the government has threatened his large family should he try and make an attempt at escaping. My friend recently visited his remaining family and told how his nephews and nieces had become brain washed at the hands of the government and reject any fact he presented to them about "Evil America."
As I have noted in previous memos, this is how America is also being transformed. Radicals, who paraded against the government in the '60's, subsequently became professors and spread their extreme ideas to an entire generation who are susceptible to those who wish to bring our nation to its knees. Today, these former students are running as candidates under the Democrat Banner, are athletes dictating to Nike and you know the rest.
Like a small pebble thrown in the water the concentric circles grow.
I have also discussed the fragility of our republic and the more government expands the more likely it is to fail. Failure eventually results in uninformed citizens who increasingly distrust out nation's institutions and who are ripe for manipulation. As our education system becomes corrupted the product of this failure becomes more malleable. Statistics of today's youth prove this to be a fact.
The foundation of faith in America is under attack, the dry rot has set in and begun to eat away at our cherished freedoms, adherence to the rule of law and our constitutional precepts. Unwinnable wars, misguided foreign policies, mounting deficits, increasing wealth disparity also contribute to weakening our embrace of democracy and capitalism. This is where America is at as the 2020 election nears.
Yesterday, after my BOCCE team won it's 2d game in a row, some of the members were having an early dinner. I saw a dear friend so I went over to greet him. He is a senior retired general officer from the army and he asked me what I thought. He is a fellow memo reader and a conservative. I told him we would know only after the coming election but I was not hopeful.
I say this even if Trump wins because I believe America's body politic is so weakened and has been so penetrated by radicalism and we face such daunting challenges and are so intellectually ill prepared as a society, I am not sure America will be able to return to its core roots.
Time will tell.
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Dick
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1) Command of the Sea
By George Friedman
Command of the sea is the foundation of American national security.
Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, the greatest strategist in American history, identified it as the core American interest (though he wrote before the war on terrorism began and before the development of nuclear weapons). The United States, he argued, can be threatened only by an enemy naval force that could both invade its territory and curb its access to the oceans. Therefore, the foundation of America’s national security, as with Britain’s, had to be the command of the sea.
Indispensable Sea Lanes
Command of the sea guarantees security and trade. Ancient Rome certainly understood as much, focused as they were on controlling Mare Nostrum (or Our Sea, referring to the Mediterranean), which forced North African threats like Carthage to attack Rome on its flanks and ensured access to Egyptian crops. The land routes around the Mediterranean were powerful but slow. The naval routes were rapid but lighter, and commercially, they were indispensable.
China and Iran are now trying to secure their sea lanes, or at least deny others access to them. For China, now a massive trading power, access to the world’s seas is an economic necessity. Its fear is that the United States could try to blockade China and, in doing so, strangle the Chinese economy (and keep in mind, the worst-case scenario is historically not the least likely one). Iran, which is hobbled by U.S. sanctions, does not have the political or naval power to break the blockade, but it does have the wherewithal to launch a counter-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The vast amounts of oil flowing through the strait are essential to many U.S. allies, and successfully blocking the strait would cause an economic crisis followed by a crisis in the alliance. Sanctioning Iran, therefore, might prove too costly for the United States. So long as trade is carried out on the seas, control of the seas is essential.
Historically, command of the sea depended on surface vessels, powered by oars, sails, coal, oil and so forth. The operational principle of national power was the possession of a sufficient fleet to overwhelm the enemy primarily in size and weaponry. The high point of this ancient concept of naval warfare was the battleship, a massive and expensive vessel, carrying a handful of guns able to fire large munitions at long range. Surface warfare had reached its peak with the battleship. Its cost would cripple a mid-sized country’s economy. It could defeat any ship it encountered, save another battleship. The race was in size, armor and munitions, and whichever country had the most could protect its maritime interests.
The foundation of naval tactics was therefore the surface vessel against the surface vessel. This was replaced not by any advancement in the power of battleships but by the introduction of a new concept in naval warfare: air power. Whereas battleships fought by firing salvos of large shells at enemies, aircraft could fire small explosive shells that impacted the surface and torpedoes that hit battleships below the waterline. Another threat came from submarines.
Starting with the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, and culminating with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, vessels designed to carry torpedoes and bombs devastated battleships in harbors. Very rapidly, the center of gravity of naval warfare shifted to the aircraft carrier and was supplemented by the submarine, which was designed to break the supply chain in the North Atlantic and Western Pacific.
This combination of aircraft carriers and submarines had been at the heart of naval warfare for nearly a century, but new munitions eventually challenged their primacy. Specifically, the introduction of precision-guided munitions increased the vulnerability of the carrier.
These are not ballistic missiles; once fired, their direction could be corrected, making them much more accurate than the older missiles. In 1967, a Soviet Styx missile fired from Egypt sank an Israeli destroyer, the Eilat. The accuracy was stunning, as was the warhead’s effect.
The sinking of the Eilat forced many to second guess the aircraft carrier. The assumption had been that fighters could provide protection to carriers. Enemy aircraft had to fly into the combat air patrol’s space to deliver iron bombs and torpedoes. The Eilat incident showed that this was not necessary. A PGM fired from shore – or by an aircraft standing outside the air defense space of fighters, anti-air guns and missiles – could sink or wreck ships.
One way to defend against this was to expand the fighter space, but as this happens, it outstrips the availability of fighters. The focus turned, then, from shooting down attacking planes to destroying incoming missiles. Systems like the American Aegis were created, at enormous expense, to do so. No system is perfect, so keeping attackers at a distance remained critical. The cost of this was a massively increased number of advanced vessels designed to provide air defense and anti-submarine warfare capability. The carrier battle groups cost many billions of dollars in initial development and maintenance, to allow 30-70 attack aircraft to fly toward a target and fire PGMs into a similar defensive array.
The aircraft carrier had begun to look like the battleship, with pyramiding costs designed to provide defense. It was similar in a second sense. The PGMs evolved, partly in accuracy but mostly in speed and agility. This forced the air defense systems to evolve, too.
The cost of evolving the PGM was much lower than the cost of evolving the defensive system, so as the cost of maintaining the security of the carrier battle group rose, the strike capability – the tonnage that could be delivered against an enemy – did not keep pace.
Introducing Hypersonics
The crisis point for the carrier has been reached with the emergence ofhypersonic missiles, which can reach speeds of over five times the speed of sound, with maneuverability. The range of these missiles has expanded the combat envelope substantially, forcing extreme upgrades to the air defense system. Some claim that the explosives these missiles carry could not sink a carrier. But given their precision, they could render the carrier inoperable during battle by attacking key elements of the flight deck.
It is for this reason that the Russians and Chinese have trumpeted their hypersonic systems. They represent a challenge to the American command of the sea, so long as the foundation of the system is surface warships – and even submarines become more vulnerable as the oceans become more transparent to the hypersonic missile sensors.
As the range of the hypersonic missiles increases and their cost decreases, the dangers to surface warships rise. Defenses are possible, but the missile-versus-missile paradigm becomes increasingly risky. A less risky solution is to render the missiles inoperable. This can be done by targeting the guidance system, which requires the general location of the enemy, and the onboard terminal guidance system. It is the intelligence on the general location of the ship that is the failure point.
To locate a fleet, it is necessary to have some reconnaissance. This can involve aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles or space-based systems. Aircraft can stumble into the carrier’s kill zone. UAVs can be shot down or, worse, their electronics corrupted, their signals spoofed and so on. Nothing is without risk, but the primary strategic platform for monitoring an ocean must be space based. It alone has the breadth of vision to provide useful guidance to hypersonic missiles that must have a vast range to be most effective.
If the key to control of the sea becomes the hypersonic missile, it is like the carrier-based aircraft, or the battleship’s guns. It is the deliverable. But just as the carrier-based plane or battleship guns must have targeting information, so must the hypersonic missile, wherever it is based. The primary source of strategic targeting must be based in space. And that means that command of the sea will depend on a space-based system that will control munitions. The aircraft carrier began to separate the platform and the munitions it delivers. The hypersonic missile radicalizes this by taking the targeting platform away from the sea into space, and the munition to be delivered away from the ship and to the land.
As the range increases, deploying hypersonics at sea or even on submarines is dangerous. The sea makes it very hard to hide a firing platform. Land is full of folds and holes and vegetation, all supplemented by manmade confusion. Identifying these will also require space-based reconnaissance and range to strike. War must now begin by blinding the enemy, and that means taking out reconnaissance satellites and then filling the gap with UAVs. War is initiated with space-based attacks, and the control of space becomes the foundation of control of the seas. However, with hypersonic missiles being located on the ground, there must be attacks on land-based launchers, which, mapped out by satellites, must become mobile and stealthy to survive.
Command of space is becoming the foundation of the command of the sea. Those who can see enemy missiles can destroy them and do so rapidly with longer-range hypersonics. Space denial, therefore, would be essential to protecting merchant vessels from enemy attack. We are not far from this reality.
The satellites and UAVs exist, and new generations of hypersonic missiles are appearing.
The command of the sea shifted from the surface of the sea to the air and is now shifting from the air into space.
It does not change the core geopolitics, but it does transform war.
Connecting the Dots: Health, Education, Economics and Politics in Rural Georgia.
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Is there a relationship between community prosperity and foreign-born populations?
by Charles Hayslett on July 3, 2019
I’m a messy and disorganized researcher. Within an hour or so after diving into a new piece of research my desk and the floor around me are littered with scraps of paper and notes. I’m also easily distracted. I’m bad about being drawn to bits and pieces of information that aren’t central to what I’m trying to focus on.
It happened a week or so ago when I was mucking around in a mega-spreadsheet of data shared with me some months back by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG)[i], a Washington think-tank that has studied and ranked all the counties and cities (with populations of 50,000 or more) in the country on various metrics measuring prosperity and, more specifically, “distress” on a community.
For some reason, my eye kept drifting out to column AF, the 29th and very last column on the far right-hand edge of the spreadsheet. It showed the percentage of foreign-born population for each community.
The reason it kept catching my eye was that it seemed, in my casual observation as I was working on my last post, that communities with higher percentages of foreign-born residents were doing better than those with lower percentages. I noticed, for example, that the foreign-born population in Albany, which has the worst Distressed Community Index (DCI) score of any city in Georgia (and one of the worst in the country), was less than three percent of the total population. In contrast, Alpharetta’s population is 23.3 percent foreign-born and it posted the best DCI score in the state.
So, I decided to take a deeper dive. I’m not trained as a statistician, so I’m not prepared to say there’s a correlation, let alone a causal relationship. But there are absolutely some interesting patterns. A more comprehensive look at all the Georgia cities included in EIG’s dataset provides one (those with populations of 50,000 and up), as this graph shows.
The five Georgia cities with the best DCI scores all had significant foreign-born populations. As EIG’s DCI score hit 50, the midpoint, the percentage of foreign-born residents in a city started to drop precipitously. About the only things interrupting a nearly perfect inverse relationship between rising DCI scores and falling foreign-born populations was Athens-Clarke, a university city with a significant foreign-born faculty and student body.
Then another comparison occurred to me. In December 2016 I wrote a piece contrasting Gwinnett County to all 56 counties of interior South Georgia. That contrast was not charitable to South Georgia. Among other things, I found that Gwinnett County, with only about three-fourths the population of the 56 South Georgia counties, generated 22 percent more in personal income and nearly 50 percent more in federal taxes. At the same time, it consumed substantially less in social services – less than a third as much in Medicaid costs, for example.
At the time, I wasn’t looking at immigration or foreign-born populations or even thinking about whether there was a relationship between immigration and the overall prosperity of a community. But, for what it’s worth, it turns out that Gwinnett County has the second-highest proportion of foreign-born residents in the state, 24.7 percent.[ii] Its overall distress score is 9.0, which puts it 10th in the state and 282nd in the nation. Gwinnett also does well in other rankings – 15th best in the latest Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Job Tax Credit Rankings[iii] and 5th in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s latest county rankings for health outcomes.
The proportion of foreign-born residents in the 56 South Georgia counties works out to 4.2 percent – fewer than 50,000 people altogether – not even a fourth of the 216,000 foreign-born residents in Gwinnett County. More than 100 languages are spoken in Gwinnett County’s public schools, which, not for nothing, is the only school system in America to win the prestigious Broad Prize for education twice – first in 2010 and again in 2014.
Gwinnett County is, in fact, already a majority-minority county. Only 40.3 percent of the county’s population is non-Hispanic white; blacks make up 25.4 percent of the population; Hispanics, 20.5 percent, and Asians or Pacific Islanders, 11.1 percent.
The same sort of picture emerges when you look at this through the prism of my “Trouble in God’s Country” regions. My 12-county Metro Atlanta region, which generates the lion’s share of the state’s economic output, is home to about 47 percent of the overall population but nearly 72 percent of the foreign-born population. As this table shows, Metro Atlanta is the only Trouble in God’s Country region where the percentage of foreign-born residents hits double digits.
Total Population
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% of the Population Foreign-Born
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Foreign-Born Population (Calculated)
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Metro Atlanta
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4,727,376
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15.1%
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715,490
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Coastal Ga
|
579,879
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5.4%
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31,081
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Middle Ga
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1,749,350
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3.9%
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68,737
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North Ga
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1,882,410
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6.9%
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130,606
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South Ga
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1,160,305
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4.2%
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48,599
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Totals
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10,099,320
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9.8%
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994,513
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Now, this is not to suggest that an infusion of foreign-born residents into a local population is a guarantee of improved economic and civic conditions. You can absolutely find examples of communities with low percentages of foreign-born populations that are doing well. And there are differences between the groups of cities shown in the chart above that should be acknowledged.
Geography is one. All the cities with high distress scores and single-digit percentages of foreign-born residents are located from about the gnat line south; all the cities with low distress scores and double-digit percentages of foreign-borns are clustered across Metro Atlanta’s prosperous northern arc (as is Gwinnett County, and, for that matter, Cobb County, whose profile is fairly similar to Gwinnett’s).
So it may be that immigrants finding their way to Georgia migrated naturally to the most prosperous areas. Or it may be that they don’t like gnats. I blame the gnats.
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[i] Much of the raw data used in this post, and in the chart above, was provided to the author under license by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), but the analysis and observations are entirely my own – as are any errors I might have made. EIG does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of, or necessarily agree with, the information in this article.
[ii] The only county with a higher percentage of foreign-born residents than Gwinnett is hapless Stewart County, in southwest Georgia. The nearly 1,700 foreign-born residents there constitute about 29 percent of the local population, but you probably wouldn’t know it from walking down the street in Lumpkin, the county seat, since virtually all of them are locked up in a federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement prison.
[iii] The Georgia Department of Community Affairs issues Job Tax Credit rankings each year, based on a formula built around local per capita income, poverty rates, and unemployment rates. Because the purpose of the program is to try to drive economic development in Georgia’s poorer areas, it ranks the counties from worst to best. On that list, Gwinnett County ranks 145th. For my purposes, I reverse the DCA list to produce a best-to-worst ranking.
1b) Countdown to Civil War
by Linda Goudsmit, Author, Commentator, Political Analyst
On January 26, 2018, Daniel Greenfield gave a brilliant speech in South Carolina in which she argued that politics make civil wars – not guns. “Guns are how a civil war ends. Politics is how it begins.” What does that mean?
“Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge. That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country?When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.”
This is no small thing. The United States of America has distinguished itself by the peaceful transfer of power through elections for 242 years. Opposing parties compete in an election – one side wins and the other loses. The country reunites after the election in support of the office of the President and competes again four years later.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton competed against Donald Trump for the presidency and lost. For the first time in American history, 22 months after a presidential election the losing party still refuses to accept the election outcome. We are in a countdown to civil war. What changed?
The losing party of leftist Democrats began believing their own narrative of political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism. They live in the world of subjective reality where facts do not get in their way. Let me explain.
Subjective reality is a dreamscape where saying is the same as doing, all ideas are equal, and trying is the same as achieving. In the surreal world of subjective reality, FEELINGS are the determining value. So, if you feel like Hillary should have won then in your mind she did win. If you feel that Donald Trump should not have won then he didn’t win – he is not your president.
In the objective world of FACTS, Donald Trump won the election and is now the 45th president of the United States. He is President Donald Trump and is America’s president whether you like him or don’t like him, whether you agree with him or don’t agree with him, and whether you voted for him or didn’t vote for him. That is what it means to accept an election outcome – you accept the fact of it no matter how you feel about it.
As Tiger Woods so concisely pointed out, “He’s the president of the United States and you have to respect the office,” Tiger said. “No matter who’s in the office, you may like, dislike the personality or the politics, but we all must respect the office.”
Thought precedes behavior. If you do not accept the election outcome and behave as if Hillary won and Donald Trump lost, you are not only out of touch with objective reality, you are participating in the breakdown of the established American social order and are part of the countdown to civil war. How did this happen?
During the 1970s parenting and education shifted the focus from preparing children for adulthood to the elusive goal of assuring happiness for children. Happiness was no longer the consequence of competence and achievement – it became the goal itself. A seismic shift in the standards for behavior was launched.
Those of us who had young children in elementary school in the late 70s and 80s witnessed a perplexing change in educational standards. Feelings replaced facts for what determined acceptable and unacceptable behavior. This is how it works.
Competence was abandoned as the mother of self-esteem and replaced with contrived methods of feel-good dialogue. Bolstering children’s self-esteem and protecting their feelings was the metric by which all things were measured.
Trying was equivalent to achieving, all ideas were equal, cooperative learning replaced individual study, participation trophies were awarded, and there was no such thing as winning and losing.
Whatever made your child feel good was acceptable and whatever made the child feel bad was unacceptable. The problem, of course, is that children who are socialized in this artificial way do not develop the necessary coping skills and practice to deal with real loss and real disappointment outside the controlled atmosphere of their surroundings.
The destructive leftist regressive slide from facts to feelings as the determinant for behavior was manifest at home and in the classroom. Parents had abdicated their authority to “experts” and followed their feelings-based advice which inappropriately empowered the children robbing them of the attitudes and impulse control required to cope with loss and disappointment in the adult world of objective reality.
Three decades later the situation was so out of control that satirical films were written to highlight the absurdity of it. In the classic 2012 satirical comedy “Parental Guidance,” Diane (Bette Midler) and Artie Decker (Billy Crystal) play the “other” grandparents who go to their daughter and son-in-law’s home in Atlanta to babysit their three grandchildren so the parents, Alice and Phil, can get away for a business trip.
The old school, straightforward, authoritative parenting style of the grandparents immediately clashes with the parents’ indirect, tentative, over-involved, feel-good style. Alice instructs her parents on the rules for disciplining the children, “We don’t say No – we say think of the consequences. We don’t say quit your whining – we say use your words.” The scenes are hilarious but extremely telling.
In one scene Turner, the middle child is pitching at his little-league baseball game. Artie, a minor-league sportscaster who was fired because of his old school style instinctively starts to call the game. When he calls the batter out after three strikes it causes a ruckus. The umpire walks over and says, “There are no outs in this game.” No outs? Why not? The umpire explains that the kids keep swinging until they get on base and they don’t keep score so every game ends in a tie. WHAT?
The movie is farcical but the social implications are actually quite serious. Kids raised in this contrived manner are not accustomed to winners and losers – so why would they think elections outcomes are any different than baseball games when they are older? The problem is that the subjective reality they were raised with eventually clashes with objective reality – election laws – and there are consequences. When election laws are not respected we are in the countdown to civil war.
What about limits? Children who are raised without limits have great difficulty in abiding by limits including the limitations defined by laws. In an equally hilarious scene the family is at the symphony and Barker, the youngest boy, starts running through the audience chased by Artie completely disrupting the performance.
Eventually, Artie catches Barker and throws the child over his knees and raises his arm in exasperation, the entire audience gasps fearful that Artie will spank him. Artie looks up and gives an impassioned speech mocking the parenting phrases “use your words” and when he finally exclaims, “The only words these kids never hear is NO!” the audience breaks into thunderous applause. Artie’s point highlights the consequences of indirect, tentative, feelings-based parenting.
Ironically, Turner stutters and has great difficulty using his words. He is in therapy with an arrogant condescending young woman with a worthless Ph.D. from Yale who applauds Turner when he circles the room making airplane noises. Artie points out that none of the children are speaking and she smugly explains that the therapy is to make them “feel” safe enough to express themselves – Artie says he thought the point was for them to speak. Why is this important?
Comedy is an extremely effective way to expose the absurdity of behavior – so it is with “Parental Guidance.” The film is a masterpiece of comedy but also a cautionary tale. When feelings and effort are substituted for facts and achievement the consequences are a generation of young people who actually believe that their personal feelings are the metric for determining what is real and what is acceptable behavior.
They live their lives in the alternative world of subjective reality and take advice from “experts” schooled in feelings rather than facts. In the dramatic conclusion of the film, Turner steps up to the microphone and recites the famous play-by-play from Bobby Thompson’s stunning 1951 home run that won the pennant for the Giants. Turner had found his voice with Artie’s old school guidance. Why is this important?
Feelings define identity politics. Identity politics are the foundation of today’s leftist Democrat party. Feeling like a victim defines you as a victim.
The Democrat party is the party of self-defined victimhood that embraces people of every color, age, religion, gender, sexual preference, and socioeconomic status. What they do not tolerate is anyone who thinks differently. What binds these disparate groups together is their hatred for President Trump and refusal to accept the 2016 presidential election outcome.They do not accept President Trump as their president because they don’t like him and since their feelings are more important than facts they behave as if he is not the president. They are participating in the countdown to civil war.
Two generations of Americans have been deliberately indoctrinated toward collectivism in the leftist narrative that prioritizes feelings over facts. The Democrat leaders are deliberately exploiting the compliant and unaware young people that leftist indoctrination has produced.
Anti-American Americans who refuse to accept the election outcome are the social justice warriors that have been duped into supporting the fiction of leftist socialism. Their leaders knowingly created divisiveness to produce the social chaos that will make the United States ungovernable. Why? Social chaos leads to civil war. Politics makes civil wars – not guns.
It is worth repeating, “Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge. That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.”
President Donald Trump is demanding a return to the Constitution and rule of law. He is demanding that America honor and accept election outcomes because without acceptance there is only civil war to determine who runs the country.
The leftist Democrat party is the hypocritical party of feelings. They only accept election outcomes if their preferred candidate wins. Only their own feelings matter!
Those of us who did not like or vote for Barack Obama accepted the 2008 and 2012 election outcomes. Because we are Americans first we accepted Obama’s victory regardless of our personal feelings.
We did not “resist” and leaders of the opposition party did not participate in a coup to overthrow him. We waited until 2016 and cast our votes for President Donald J. Trump – the duly elected 45th president of the United States of America.
America is at a tipping point – if we allow the FEELINGS of the left to supersede the rule of law the country will tilt further toward anarchy and there will be civil war. Accepting the FACTS of election outcomes is a far better choice. It’s time to go old school – there are winners and there are losers. Get used to it!
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2) What was Iran thinking in trying to seize British tanker
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Sometimes Iran acts like it is a playing a complex game of international diplomacy that mixes war threats with diplomatic threats and sometimes involves direct attacks designed to show that it means business. Other times Iran seems to blunder along doing the most obvious thing that it has said it would do, as if it is just looking for a fight. Its attempt to seize a British oil tanker appears to fall into the latter category. On the face of it Iran is carrying out threats it made over the past week to respond to the UK taking over an Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar.
Less than a day after reports emerged that the US was seeking an international coalition to stop Iranian attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman, five Iranian fast boats captained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps approached a British oil tanker. We know this because it was revealed on Wednesday that the boats had sought to interdict the British tanker on Wednesday. A British warship, HMS Montrose, warned the Iranians to stay away, and the Iranian boats went away.
Case closed? Not really. Why would the IRGC, which is already designated a terrorist organization, launch a brazen attack when a British warship was nearby. Either they are not paying attention, which is unlikely, or they were looking for an incident.
Let’s do the math here. On May 12 four ships were sabotaged in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah. These included Saudi, UAE and a Norwegian ship. Photos of the Norwegian tanker Andrea Victory showed a hole in the ship. The US blamed Iran for the incident. A more serious incident occurred on June 13 when two oil tankers were attacked off the Iranian port of Jask in the Gulf of Oman. An explosion harmed one of them and a second was later seen with an alleged limpet mine attached to it. Video appeared to show an IRGC fast boat removing the mine. Then on June 20 Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone, almost resulting in US retaliatory airstrikes. Iran said it could have shot down a second US military plane the same day.
The shoot down and the attacks on the tankers were done with precision. For instance, even though there were 44 crew on the tankers on June 13, none of them were harmed. Whoever carried out the attack successfully attached mines so as not to harm the crew. It isn’t clear if Iran thought they would sink one of the ships. Either way the goal was to show Iran was serious about threatening the Straits of Hormuz.
From June 20 to July 9 things have been relatively quiet on the Iranian front. The US climbed down from talk of war. Iran’s other actions in Iraq stopped. Only the Iranian-backed Houthis kept up attacks on Saudi Arabia. The US sanctioned Hezbollah members this week. But what really angered Iran was the UK sending Royal Marines to stop an Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar. Iran warned several times since July 3 that it might take over a British tanker in response. Oddly the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears to have warned of these “consequences” on July 10, after the IRGC had already sent its boats to try to grab the UK tanker on the same day. Rouhani made a similar decision to travel to Central Asian countries for summits the day after the June 13 attacks, as if the IRGC doesn’t bother to coordinate with his office. Or the level of coordination is so seamless that he issued the warning with the Iranian fast boats already on their way. But why warn of “consequences” when you’ve already given the green light?
Iran knows that the incident will fuel the US calls for an international force to help protect ships in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. So this may be an added benefit for Iran, encouraging a coalition to be constructed. But wouldn’t that go against Iran’s stated goal of getting the Europeans to meet its needs regarding the sanctions? Iran has threatened European countries that it will enrich uranium to 20 percent and stock pile enriched uranium beyond the 2015 Iran deal guidelines in sixty days if the EU doesn’t do more for Iran. It already broke through aspects of the deal this last week.
Iran’s media still speaks of trade relations with the EU. However, Iran’s Tasnim media included the remarks of Rouhani in full, in which he said the UK had created insecurity by interdicting the Iranian ship. Again, it’s not clear why Iran warns of consequences after launching an attempted raid.
The Telegraph reported on July 9 that the British oil tanker British Heritage was “sheltering off the coast of Saudi Arabia amid fears it will be seized by Iran in a tit-for-tat response.” A day later the report came true as the same ship, the British Heritage, was crossing through the Strait of Hormuz and was “approached by five armed IRGC boats.” The Iranians ordered the ship to stop, reports say. A US aircraft monitored the ship from above while the HMS Montrose, a Royal Navy ship which was “escorting the tanker,” according to The Telegraph “aimed its guns on the Iranians and warned them to move away.”
The IRGC isn’t stupid. They could see the Royal Navy frigate. Iran has shown that it monitors US flights out of Gulf countries, including drones. It has radar and other sophisticated equipment. So why would it seek to stop the tanker with the frigate nearby? The presence of the tanker wasn’t a secret, media reported it hours before the incident took place Wednesday. The IRGC was saying “we know your warship is here and we will do this anyway under your noses.” Just to show how brazen Iran can be. To show they are true to their word, choreographing this incident so that they will withdraw, but show they tried? Did Iran think the Royal Navy would back down? In 2007 Iran kidnapped 15 Royal Navy sailors and held them for almost two weeks. In 2004 Iran also seized six Royal Marines and two British Navy sailors for three days. Five British sailors were also detained in 2009. Those incidents involved Iranian fast boats but not trying to seize a prize as large as a tanker, an act that looks more like piracy in the eyes of international law and the law of the seas.
Iran is brazen. If the reports are accurate, it’s attempt on Wednesday to harass the tanker was done openly and done with full knowledge of the presence of the British navy to test the UK’s response and also to see if the US is serious about its international coalition.
Less than a day after reports emerged that the US was seeking an international coalition to stop Iranian attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman, five Iranian fast boats captained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps approached a British oil tanker. We know this because it was revealed on Wednesday that the boats had sought to interdict the British tanker on Wednesday. A British warship, HMS Montrose, warned the Iranians to stay away, and the Iranian boats went away.
Case closed? Not really. Why would the IRGC, which is already designated a terrorist organization, launch a brazen attack when a British warship was nearby. Either they are not paying attention, which is unlikely, or they were looking for an incident.
Let’s do the math here. On May 12 four ships were sabotaged in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah. These included Saudi, UAE and a Norwegian ship. Photos of the Norwegian tanker Andrea Victory showed a hole in the ship. The US blamed Iran for the incident. A more serious incident occurred on June 13 when two oil tankers were attacked off the Iranian port of Jask in the Gulf of Oman. An explosion harmed one of them and a second was later seen with an alleged limpet mine attached to it. Video appeared to show an IRGC fast boat removing the mine. Then on June 20 Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone, almost resulting in US retaliatory airstrikes. Iran said it could have shot down a second US military plane the same day.
The shoot down and the attacks on the tankers were done with precision. For instance, even though there were 44 crew on the tankers on June 13, none of them were harmed. Whoever carried out the attack successfully attached mines so as not to harm the crew. It isn’t clear if Iran thought they would sink one of the ships. Either way the goal was to show Iran was serious about threatening the Straits of Hormuz.
From June 20 to July 9 things have been relatively quiet on the Iranian front. The US climbed down from talk of war. Iran’s other actions in Iraq stopped. Only the Iranian-backed Houthis kept up attacks on Saudi Arabia. The US sanctioned Hezbollah members this week. But what really angered Iran was the UK sending Royal Marines to stop an Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar. Iran warned several times since July 3 that it might take over a British tanker in response. Oddly the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears to have warned of these “consequences” on July 10, after the IRGC had already sent its boats to try to grab the UK tanker on the same day. Rouhani made a similar decision to travel to Central Asian countries for summits the day after the June 13 attacks, as if the IRGC doesn’t bother to coordinate with his office. Or the level of coordination is so seamless that he issued the warning with the Iranian fast boats already on their way. But why warn of “consequences” when you’ve already given the green light?
Iran knows that the incident will fuel the US calls for an international force to help protect ships in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. So this may be an added benefit for Iran, encouraging a coalition to be constructed. But wouldn’t that go against Iran’s stated goal of getting the Europeans to meet its needs regarding the sanctions? Iran has threatened European countries that it will enrich uranium to 20 percent and stock pile enriched uranium beyond the 2015 Iran deal guidelines in sixty days if the EU doesn’t do more for Iran. It already broke through aspects of the deal this last week.
Iran’s media still speaks of trade relations with the EU. However, Iran’s Tasnim media included the remarks of Rouhani in full, in which he said the UK had created insecurity by interdicting the Iranian ship. Again, it’s not clear why Iran warns of consequences after launching an attempted raid.
The Telegraph reported on July 9 that the British oil tanker British Heritage was “sheltering off the coast of Saudi Arabia amid fears it will be seized by Iran in a tit-for-tat response.” A day later the report came true as the same ship, the British Heritage, was crossing through the Strait of Hormuz and was “approached by five armed IRGC boats.” The Iranians ordered the ship to stop, reports say. A US aircraft monitored the ship from above while the HMS Montrose, a Royal Navy ship which was “escorting the tanker,” according to The Telegraph “aimed its guns on the Iranians and warned them to move away.”
The IRGC isn’t stupid. They could see the Royal Navy frigate. Iran has shown that it monitors US flights out of Gulf countries, including drones. It has radar and other sophisticated equipment. So why would it seek to stop the tanker with the frigate nearby? The presence of the tanker wasn’t a secret, media reported it hours before the incident took place Wednesday. The IRGC was saying “we know your warship is here and we will do this anyway under your noses.” Just to show how brazen Iran can be. To show they are true to their word, choreographing this incident so that they will withdraw, but show they tried? Did Iran think the Royal Navy would back down? In 2007 Iran kidnapped 15 Royal Navy sailors and held them for almost two weeks. In 2004 Iran also seized six Royal Marines and two British Navy sailors for three days. Five British sailors were also detained in 2009. Those incidents involved Iranian fast boats but not trying to seize a prize as large as a tanker, an act that looks more like piracy in the eyes of international law and the law of the seas.
Iran is brazen. If the reports are accurate, it’s attempt on Wednesday to harass the tanker was done openly and done with full knowledge of the presence of the British navy to test the UK’s response and also to see if the US is serious about its international coalition.
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