Iran "Crackdown"

Depending on the source, the Ayatollah's crackdown has netted anywhere from a handful to 200+ fatalities. It's hard to tell for sure as most information is coming out through Twitter instead of news organizations, and there isn't much to corroborate claims.

Except this one. Her name was Neda. Apparently her only "crime" was observing a protest with her father.

Well, at least somebody stopped it...

It turns out that not only did we not scuttle the Iranian arms shipment (yes, I know that's a pipe dream), but we let it go, lacking legal authority to detain it.

Fortunately, the Cypriots were not lacking as well:

JERUSALEM, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Cypriot authorities have detained an Iranian ship en route to Syria with a cargo of weapons, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

Quoting a European Union diplomatic source, it said Cyprus had acted after Israel and the United States requested that the Cypriot-flagged vessel be stopped.

Authorities contacted the ship and demanded that it dock in Limassol for inspection. Customs officials had unloaded part of the cargo and a large amount of weaponry, including artillery rounds and rockets, the paper said.

Cypriot authorities declined comment.

Israel believes the weapons were destined for the Lebanese Islamist guerrilla group Hezbollah or for Islamist Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, Haaretz quoted Israeli sources as saying.

On Wednesday, U.S. military officials said personnel from the U.S. Navy vessel San Antonio last week boarded the Cypriot-flagged "Monchegorsk", a cargo vessel travelling from Iran to Syria, and found a weapons shipment but for legal reasons did not confiscate the cargo.

The officials declined to say what kind of weapons were found or how many. They also would not be specific about where or when the incident occurred.

It was unclear whether this was the same ship which Haaretz reported had been apprehended by the Cypriot authorities.

Officials in Washington said the search was conducted as part of the U.S. Navy's normal maritime security role in regional waters that stretch from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean.

The U.S. officials said the arms could not be shown to violate U.N. weapons sanctions against Iran and the vessel was allowed to continue on to Syria.

The incident came to light amid media reports that the U.S. navy has been ordered to intercept suspected Iranian shipments to rearm Hamas following Israel's 22-day Gaza offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. (Additional reporting by Michele Kambas in Nicosia, writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Speaking of Intermeddlers...

I really wish we would scuttle ships caught red handed like this. When there are no consequences, we come out looking like fools, even when we do pull off a minor tactical victory like this.

U.S. Navy stopped Iran ship carrying weapons and headed to Gaza

TEL AVIV — U.S. defense sources said the U.S. Navy tracked and intercepted an Iranian ship in the Red Sea that was headed for the Gaza Strip.

The sources said U.S. marines found ammunition, including artillery shells, concealed in crates aboard the cargo ship.

"There was a huge amount of crates on board and we called for help," a defense source said.

The U.S. television network CBS News reported that the ship was intercepted by the U.S. Navy near Egypt's Suez Canal. CBS said the U.S. Navy vessel requested that Egyptian authorities direct the Iranian ship to port for a thorough search.

Linked: British Purge Commanders Over Iran-Hostage Drama

THE British navy has completed a discreet clean-out of the senior figures involved in the debacle over the arrest by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of 15 British sailors and marines.

Those involved in the Royal Navy's humiliation at the hands of Tehran have been pushed out of their high-profile jobs as part of an attempt to sweep away any reminder of the debacle...

The victims include two vice-admirals, the captain of the ship on which the boat crews served and a senior official in the failed public relations operation that followed their return to Britain.

Full article

Wars and Rumors of Wars

There are two emerging sensitive situations worth following in the days or weeks to come.

First, the Gulf of Aden piracy situation is has taken a disturbing twist. Apparently, an Iranian freighter sailing from China to the Netherlands arrived around Aden a few days early and was scheduled to transit the Suez a few days later than it should have needed. In addition to whatever planned detour it was taking, it was captured by Somali pirates and taken to Eyl.

Within days, pirates who had boarded the ship developed strange health complications, skin burns and loss of hair. Independent sources tell The Long War Journal that a number of pirates have also died. "Yes, some of them have died. I do not know exactly how many but the information that I am getting is that some of them have died," Andrew Mwangura, Director of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, said Friday when reached by phone in Mombasa.

The syndicate set the ship's ransom at $2 million and the Iranian government provided $200,000 to a local broker "to facilitate the exchange." Iran refutes that it agreed to the price and has paid any money to the pirates. Nevertheless, after sanctions were applied to IRISL on September 10, Osman says, the Iranians told the pirates that the deal was off. "They told the pirates that they could not come because of the presence of the U.S. Navy." The region is patrolled by the multinational Combined Taskforce 150, which includes ships from the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

In a strange twist, the Iranian press claims that the U.S. has offered to pay a $7 million bribe to the pirates to "receive entry permission and search the vessel." Officials in the Pentagon and the Department of State approached for this story refused to comment on the situation. Somali officials would also not comment on any direct U.S. involvement but one high-level official in the Puntland government told The Long War Journal "I can say the ship is of interest to a lot of people, including Puntland."

Thin. But worth watching. H/T: Galrahn.

The other development is at the Lebanon-Syrian border.

Syria has massed thousands of troops along its border with northern Lebanon in what officials in Beirut fear is a prelude to the first incursion since Syrian forces pulled out three years ago.

Although Damascus insists that its forces are conducting an antismuggling operation, the Lebanese Government is eyeing the moves with unease, believing that the unusual scale of the deployment has more to do with tensions between the two countries over recent sectarian clashes in northern Lebanon.

H/T: Small Wars Journal

Linked: Palin's UN Speech...

...from the event she was un-invited from because Clinton had a hissy-fit.

Link.

More Media Lies

The US is arming Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, if you believe the AP headlines.

Fact check: The 250 lb Small-Diameter Bomb (GBU-39) is not a bunker buster. It's a little shit bomb designed to be used in areas where the larger bombs we currently carry cause too much collateral damage. Its penetration ability is the same as other conventional bombs.

The truth is, Isreal asked for bunker-busters a few days earlier and was turned down. So the US sold Israel a weapon they can use to reduce civilian casualties in airstrikes in Lebanon, but refused to sell them weapons that they could use to start a war with Iran. But apparently that's not the reality that the MSM wants the people to know, so they're spinning the sale of the GBU-39 as something it's not.

I said it before, I'll say it again. Journalism is dead.

See also: Sexing up the headlines

Images: The SDB "bunker buster" vs. the GBU-28 bunker buster on F-15E Strike Eagles. Which do you think can take out a reactor in an underground bunker?

Iran: A Prediction

If we go to war with Iran,
And If that war takes the form of a sustained air campaign directed against their nuclear facilities,
I offer the following prediction:

The effectiveness of our cruise missiles will be substantially impaired against high-priority targets such as air defense hubs, airfields, and the strategic objectives themselves (the nuke sites). This ineffectiveness will be due to local point defenses, such as the SA-15 (aka, Tor-M1), and to a lack of penetration of hardened targets. This ineffectiveness will also be limited by the Iranian military's resources and priorites; in other words, lower priority targets may not be well-defended and will be vulnerable to cruise missile attack.

The overall effect of this will be that manned aircraft will have to fly the sorties to take out high-priority targets early in the conflict, and that most targets eventually hit by cruise missiles will be those which could have been hit by a manned aircraft with little to no risk to the crew. Cruise missiles will not have fulfilled their strategic purpose.