WarSclerotic

It wasn’t exactly the largest naval exercise in the world, or even a very significant one in terms of firepower. But when Iran, Russia and China gathered ships at Chabahar in southeastern Iran on Friday, they were sending a message to the world.

Iranian photographers were on hand to capture the moment that ships from the three countries readied to go to sea. It was a big moment for Tehran in which it showed that US sanctions and attempts to isolate Iran are not working.

Acting-US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said on Friday, in a statement that appeared timed to coincide with the naval drill, that Iran could conduct provocative actions in that region.

Since May, tensions have risen in the Gulf between the US and Iran. According to US assessments, Iran has attacked six oil tankers, as well as Saudi Arabia and downed a US drone. Iran continues to harass ships and even took control of a UK-flagged vessel in July. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fast boats continue to be a threat.

Iran says the drill is covering 17,000 sq. km. Several ships are involved – including Iran’s Sahand and Alborz destroyers, two Iranian logistic ships and the Neyzeh missile boat. Iran sent a hospital ship as well.

Iran’s R. Adm. Hossein Khanzadi said the drill is important for security.

On Saturday, the navies continued to work together for the second day. It is a four-day drill that will span the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman. Iran and India recently agreed to increase economic relations via Chabahar Port. The US has said it won’t block funding for this initiative.At the same time reports indicated the Chinese Xining guided-missile destroyer arrived at Chabahar for the joint exercise. Iran said Russia sent three ships from its Baltic Fleet, including the Yaroslav Mudry frigate, the Yevgeniy Khorov tanker and Yel’nya rescue boat.

Iran has refitted its destroyers and considers them among its most advanced ships. Xining is also a very modern ship and Russia’s Mudry was commissioned a decade ago.

Iranian media has played up this major success, while it has gone mostly unnoticed in Russia and China. Iran’s Press TV aired footage along with other channels.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif highlighted the joint drills. Iran is pushing a maritime security initiative called HOPE (“Hormuz Peace”) and it wants to show off its responsible behavior.

“Our joint military drills in the Sea of Oman and Indian Ocean with our Russian and Chinese partners make clear our broader commitment to secure vital waterways,” he said. Zarif has made recent diplomatic initiatives to Oman, and Iran’s president has gone to Malaysia and Japan. Iran also hosted a major Indian delegation. This comes as Iran is under criticism for cracking down on protests.

The Iranian Embassy in China shared a tweet arguing this was a transitional era that shows not everything is done by the West. “We are living in a post-Western world.”

The message is that this joint work brings stability. Iran’s Tasnim News had a similar message, saying the joint work reduces US hegemony. “Iran befriends the powerful because it has strategic ambition.”

As usual, Iran is not secretive about what it wants. It wants friends in India, China and Russia and to displace the role of the US. It accomplishes this through official initiatives like this naval drill but also through other means, such as its clandestine activities to sabotage ships in the Gulf, to have proxies fire rockets at US personnel in Iraq, by showing it can down a US drone or that it can fire rockets at Israel, a key US ally.

Iran is pushing the diplomatic envelope in Turkey, Malaysia, Japan, Oman and elsewhere. It wants to show it can multitask while the US is merely pushing sanctions. At the same time Iran continues to reduce adherence to the Iran nuclear deal.

Iran’s navy is no match for the US, but its purpose behind these drills is not to show it can confront the US. It is to show that it can partner with other countries that also want to challenge US power in the long term.

US defense strategy today is to focus on confronting Russia and China. Sea power is key to this. Yet the US Navy has been unclear as to what kind of ships it will build, scrapping ideas for littoral combat ships and a stealth-like DD-21 program, which also appears to have been a multi-decade failure.

While the US searches for a policy and future combat vessels, the message from Tehran is that symbolically the US is no longer a global hegemon.

In 2009 Israel intercepted a shipment of rockets destined for Hezbollah. The crates of rockets were a similar 107mm type as were found near a base in Iraq where a US contractor was killed and several US forces injured on Friday.

Photos posted online on Saturday show that the rockets used in the attack on the K-1 base northwest of Kirkuk were 107mm rockets that weighed 18 kg. They were manufactured in 2016. A Bongo truck with an improvised rocket launched in the back was used to fire them. A total of three rows of 12 tubes was used. Four of the rockets were found intact. 32 others were fired at K-1 base, setting off munitions in a storage facility there on Friday night and killing one US contractor. This is the most serious incident since May when rockets have been fired at bases in Iraq where US forces are present. The US has blamed Iranian-backed proxies for the past attacks. In a November attack on Qayyarah a similar salvo of 107mm rockets was fired.

In 2009 Israel intercepted the MV Francop. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website and the IDF Spokesperson at the time, the ship included munitions hidden in containers. Israel put photos online in 2009 from the ship that showed rockets. These were 107 mm rockets with the same style logo and lettering on them. The rockets say “107mm rocket” and “Lot, Date, N.W and R.No” printed on them. In 2009 the rockets had been made in 2007 and were lot number 6 and weighed 19.25 kg. They had an “R.NO” of 8872 that was hand printed. The K-1 rockets were also 107 mm, had lot number 570, made in 2016. They were 18kg and in hand written notes their “R No.” was 3965.

In 2009 Israel noted that it had intercepted 500 tons of arms en route to Syria on the MV Francop. This included 3,000 Katyusha rockets. The consignment was “en route via Syria to the Hizbullah terrorist organization,” the MFA wrote at the time.

More recent photos of these types of Iranian rockets have turned up. These include 2016 production numbers from lots 524 to 526. It appeared these were used by the Syrian regime in Eastern Ghouta in February 2017. More turned up in January 2018 in fighting in Syria near Damascus. This means that these types of rockets were frequently sent to Syria but that they also likely ended up in the hands of other pro-Iranian allies, including Hezbollah and likely in the hands of pro-Iranian members of the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq. These include groups such as Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq which US officials have accused in the past of threatening US forces. The US sanctioned the head of Asaib Ahl al-Haq in early December.

That means these PMU groups had the motive, means and opportunity to carry out the attack. What is missing is information on where precisely this lot number of 2016 rockets of the 107mm type were exported by Iran. Reports earlier this month indicated Iran was sending ballistic missiles to Syria. It is known that 107mm rockets have been sent to the PMU in the past according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

WASHINGTON – Experts in Washington are debating how the Trump administration should respond to the killing of US contractor in Kirkuk on Friday.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank in Washington, told The Jerusalem Post that the regime in Iran has killed and injured Americans, “which is a flagrant violation of the redline President [Donald] Trump established.”

“To not respond will be to invite further attacks and destroy American deterrence, which already has been significantly undermined by Trump’s unwillingness to respond to previous Iranian attacks against American assets and those of our allies,” he added.

He emphasized, however, that no rule says Trump must respond directly to this attack in Iraq. “If the administration is confident that Iran-backed proxies are behind these attacks, the US can strike at regime assets anywhere,” said Dubowitz.

“Indeed, the US should strike the regime where it least expects it,” he continued. “Beyond the element of surprise, it’s also critical that the response goes beyond sanctions or cyber and deploy precise but overwhelming military force.”

Dubowitz also addressed the Israeli efforts to counter Iran. “Israel has shown the ability to strike hard at Iranian military assets without meaningful retaliation from Tehran,” he said. “US policy should be to reinforce Israeli military power and do nothing to restrict Israel’s freedom of action against Iran in Iraq, Syria, or elsewhere in the Middle East. US and Israeli military action, mutually reinforcing and coordinated where appropriate, can impose punitive costs on the Islamic Republic and increase deterrence against a regime that believes today it can challenge Washington with impunity.”

Mike Pregent, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, shares a similar perspective. “Israel has been able to attack IRGC Quds Force in Iraq with impunity,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “We have not. For some reason, the United States doesn’t want to [hit] these militias. But we said we would if they killed an American. My concern is that [the administration would] say, ‘Well, it was a contractor.’ Who cares if it was a contractor? It was an American, and it was on an Iraqi-US base,” he said.“This was an attack against the Iraqi security forces and the Americans knowing the Iraqi security forces cannot go after the militias because of the level of broader infiltration in these decision-making ranks,” Pregent continued. “The US needs to look at its problem in Iraq, reevaluated its relationship and use every economic tool to put pressure on Baghdad, like getting rid of our loan guarantees for that $30 billion; stop immediately the US training equip program. until Baghdad purges these people from the security forces, which they won’t.”

Pregent told the Post that according to his knowledge, Kataeb Hezbollah is responsible for the attack. “This is an American red line,” he said. “Iranian-backed militia killed an American in Iraq. They’d been conducting these harassing attacks for about two months with impunity. You can’t leave it to Baghdad to tell us who did this because Baghdad is not going to tell us it was Kataeb Hezbollah. They’re going to say it’s ISIS or they’re going to say it was Ba’athists elements. That’s what they always do. So, we have to kind of take action on our own. And this will be the test whether or not the president is willing to address a red line that Iran just violated with this attack. And we need to reevaluate our relationship with Baghdad. We should sanction the MOI, the MOD we should designate and sanction Hadi al-Amiri. We should put pressure on Baghdad.

“These are tough things that I’m recommending,” Pregent added. “What’s likely to happen is that we’re likely to let Baghdad tell us it was ISIS when we know ISIS didn’t do it. That’s the easy way out. It sends a message to Iran that they can continue to kill Americans, and then we will blame it on ISIS, and that’s a very bad position for the United States to be in.”

Ned Price, a lecturer at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and former spokesperson for the National Security Council under the Obama administration, told The Jerusalem Post that the first task for the administration will be determining responsibility – whether this was the work of a Shi’ite faction or a Sunni terrorist group. “But, more broadly, the Trump administration’s approach to Iraq has been of two minds: On the one hand, there’s been an understandable desire to reduce the footprint in an effort to prevent the type of tragedy that struck yesterday. On the other, the administration has taken a stridently aggressive anti-Tehran approach, both in Iraq and throughout the region,” he said.

“But the two are not always coherent, especially as the drawdown in diplomatic representation has allowed Iran to garner an even larger foothold in Iraqi politics. What this incident underscores is the need for a holistic evaluation of US objectives and strategies in Iraq. The piecemeal approach that we’ve seen in recent years is not sufficient, and places Americans in undoing the harm,” Price added.