June 25, 2021
by Warren L. Nelson
After 10 years of talking about it, the Iranian Navy has sent two ships into the Atlantic Ocean to demonstrate its “might” and “professionalism.” But the two ships did not sail into the Gulf of Mexico to taunt the Americans, as previously discussed or even visit Venezuela and Cuba. Instead, rather than cross the Atlantic and risk a confrontation with the United States, the two ships changed course in mid-ocean and skedaddled toward the Mediterranean.
The strange performance of starting to cross the Atlantic and then shifting course gave the world the impression that the Islamic Republic had been frightened off by saber-rattling in the United States, as many right-wingers but not Biden Administration officials called for the two ships to be seized by the United States.
However, there was some evidence the Islamic Republic never wanted to chance a confrontation with the US and never planned to actually cross the Atlantic.
Military vessels sailing in international waters in peacetime cannot be seized. But some in the United States argued that the ships were carrying weapons to Venezuela and could be seized for violating US sanctions. The Biden Administration never embraced that argument but it didn’t refute it either. Pentagon officials spoke of their concern and irritation and disgust that the Islamic Republic might be delivering arms to Venezuela but they never threatened to do anything about it.
A June 2 Defense Department statement said Iranian arms sales would be “a provocative act and a threat to our partners in this hemisphere. As such we would reserve the right to take appropriate measures – in concert with our partners to deter the delivery or transit of such weapons.”
Former US officials from across the political spectrum urged the Biden Administration to seize the ships if they attempted to carry out an arms delivery.
“They are in effect pirate ships,” said John Bolton, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, noting that Iran has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism and Washington has levied heavy sanctions on Tehran and Caracas. “The United States has a legitimate right of self-defense against both of them.”
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former commander of the US European Command and the US Southern Command, who was considered a possible running mate by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, wrote that “intervention may be justified” because arms transfers are a potential violation of US sanctions.
“If the US was willing to seize Iranian oil shipments for violating sanctions last year, it should be prepared to take direct action to stop these small but lethal machines of war from being delivered to a corrupt and dangerous regime in Caracas,” he wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed.
The two Iranian vessels are the frigate Sahand and the Makran, a former oil tanker that was converted to a floating forward staging base. The Makran just entered the Iranian Navy in January and is the largest ship in Iran’s Navy by far. The Makran was carrying fuel and other supplies for the Sahand, which could not have made it through the Atlantic without such help.
Note that the ships are part of the Iranian Navy, not the Pasdaran’s maritime arm.
The Navy said the point of the trip was to prove that the Navy was capable of such long-distance operations.
Iran has been saying since 2011 that it planned to send some warships to the Atlantic Ocean to demonstrate the reach of the Iranian Navy. The Navy has spoken of sailing ships into the Gulf of Mexico in an apparent form of payback for the US Navy sending ships into the Persian Gulf. A few years ago, the Iranian Navy sent two warships to visit a port in South Africa. They then sailed briefly into the South Atlantic but quickly returned to South Africa.
The latest adventure into the Atlantic was not announced in advance by Iran. Instead, it was revealed May 30 by Politico, which reported the story in breathtaking terms, as if the deployment represented some kind of threat to the US. However, two small warships sailing, even in the Gulf of Mexico, pose no threat whatsoever. The Soviet and Russian navies have routinely sailed close to the United States. Russian warships routinely call at Cuban ports.
In the past, some US naval officials have even talked about broadcasting a warm welcome to any visiting Iranian warships, since that would contrast with the hostile Iranian reaction to US warships in the Persian Gulf.
Several days after Politico revealed the trip of the two ships, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the former commander of the Navy who now holds a higher post in the Defense Ministry, announced the ships had entered the Atlantic. He spoke in front of a map showing the ship’s route. No one seemed to notice that the dotted line showing the future route did not go to Venezuela but turned northward above the equator and then eastward toward Gibraltar and then stopped. (See accompanying photo on Page One.)
Under international law, both countries have the right to visit international waters off the other. The US Navy is not going to call into question its right to sail in the Persian Gulf by challenging Iranian ships in the Western Hemisphere.
As Venezuela’s oil refining sector has collapsed in recent years, the Islamic Republic has sent multiple fuel tankers to the country to help with crippling fuel shortages. In exchange, Venezuela’s government has supplied Tehran with much-needed cash and helped it build relationships in Latin America.
US officials have watched those ties blossom with varying levels of concern.
In December, the top commander of US troops in Central and South America described Iran’s growing military presence in Venezuela as “alarming.” In comments reported by The Wall Street Journal, Adm. Craig Faller, the commander of US Southern Command, said the presence of personnel from the Qods Force was particularly concerning.
Last summer, the US seized four non-Iranian tankers carrying cargo from Iran to Venezuela. For the early part of their journey, those ships and five others were traveling with an Iranian naval intelligence ship, US officials said. The ships did not reach Venezuela. They were stopped and their cargoes removed, with the agreement of their owners, on the argument that the cargoes violated US sanctions. The firms that owned the tankers presumably cooperated with the US because they did want to have their ships banned from US ports for sanctions violations.
Demonstrating the ability to sail great distances is an important prestige issue for the Islamic Republic because it obviously has not had that ability.
Iranian Navy officers have even talked publicly about the difficulty they have keeping ships at sea for a long time. The Navy regularly sends a pair of ships on anti-piracy duty off Somalia. It has claimed that one of those deployments lasted 150 days, but no others survived as long as 100 days and one lasted a mere 30 days. The average deployment has been about two months, not a very impressive record.
Rear Admiral Touraj Hassani-Moqaddam, the deputy commander of Iran’s Navy, said the mission to the Atlantic could take five months, or more than 150 days.
Back in January, the state news agency said the mission would include two ships the brand-new Sahand, which Iran calls a destroyer despite its small size, and the much larger Kharg, which is a supply ship. The Kharg, however, caught fire and sank a few weeks ago.
Officials said earlier that the ships would call at a port in Venezuela. No other port calls were mentioned, though many observers expected the ships to go to Cuba.
Much attention in Iran was focused on the idea that a trip to the Atlantic would be viewed as provocative by the US Navy.
For more than two centuries, however, the US Navy has made freedom of the seas its core peacetime mission. The US Navy was created in the 1790s expressly because of the threat to free shipping posed by the Barbary pirates off North Africa. The US Navy argues that ships of every nation have every right to go unimpeded anywhere in international waters which includes the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico.
Iran officials regularly assert that the Americans have no right to sail in the Persian Gulf and just in recent weeks a few Iranian Navy officers have claimed the authority to stop American ships from coming “near” Iranian territorial waters. But in announcing the plan to sail in the Atlantic, they emphasized freedom of the seas as if they suspected the Americans might try to stop them from entering the Atlantic.
Three and a half years ago, the newly-named commander of the Iranian Navy said he would not only send warships into the Atlantic Ocean, as his predecessor talked about for six years, but would send them right into America’s backyard by sailing them around the Gulf of Mexico.
A few rightwing writers treated that as a threatening action, but most of the US media did not pay any attention to the announcement at all.
Rear Admiral Hossain Khanzadi, who was named in November 2017 to succeed Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as commander of the Iranian Navy, said ships would sail into the Gulf of Mexico “in the near future,” which he did not define. But the Navy first started talking about plans to sail in the Atlantic back in 2011.
Khanzadi said, “Our fleet of warships will be sent to the Atlantic Ocean in the near future and will visit one of the friendly states in South America and the Gulf of Mexico. The countries bordering the Gulf of Mexico are Cuba, the United States and Mexico.
Khanzadi made the announcement at his first press conference after taking command of the Navy. He said, “The appearance of our vessels in the Mediterranean and Suez Canal shocked the world and the US also made comments about it.” Since most navies sail all over the world, the very brief appearances of two ships on two occasions for a few days in the Mediterranean did not shock anyone. The US Navy did not comment on the ships’ presence except to confirm their entry and then departure from the Mediterranean.
American military analyst Anthony Cordesman saw the planned sailing as little more than a publicity stunt designed to draw media attention to Iran. “They could send a ship into the Atlantic not even a warship and fire a missile. And the global media will give them the attention that Iran wants,” Cordesman told Reuters.
In November 2016, Khan-zadi’s predecessor, Admiral Sayyari, announced that two of Iran’s ships had sailed in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in history, demonstrating the Navy’s “might.”
Sayyari did not say how many days or hours the two ships spent in the Atlantic.
He said they sailed into the Atlantic after making a port visit in South Africa and were then back a few days later to the South African port of Durban, which lies on the Indian Ocean.
For some unexplained reason, the Navy did not announce the entry into the Atlantic until the two vessels had returned to the Indian Ocean. But there is no indication that the ships did anything but sail briefly into the Atlantic, then turn around and sail back into the Indian Ocean.
In January 2014, state broadcasting said the “destroyer” Sabalan and the “logistic helicopter carrier” Kharg had left Iran on a three-month voyage that would include ports of call in the Atlantic.
The two Iranian ships called at ports on the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Then nothing more was said about any visit to the Atlantic. After several more weeks, the ships returned to port in Iran and nothing was said about the Atlantic.
The great Atlantic adventure actually began in July 2011 when the Navy first said it aimed to put warships in the Atlantic. Then in April 2012, one admiral spoke of putting a warship off New York City.
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, commander of the Pasdar maritime arm, said, “Our naval forces are so powerful that we have a presence in all the waters of the world and, if need be, we can move to within three miles of New York.”
But it isn’t a matter of power; it is a matter of legal right. Although the Law of the Sea recognizes a country’s territorial waters as extending 12 nautical miles (14 statute miles or 22 kilometers) out from the coast, it also recognizes that even military vessels have the right of “innocent passage” through territorial waters and can come even closer to the coastline than three miles. So Iran has the right to sail within three miles of the United States. (And the United States has the right to sail within three miles of Iran, though the Islamic Republic denies that.)
The remarks about sailing close to New York came from the commander of the Pasdar maritime arm, but the Pasdaran do not operate a “blue water” or deep-sea navy. The Pasdar maritime arm is assigned the Persian Gulf and and adjacent waters as its operating theater. The Iranian Navy operates elsewhere. The fact that the Navy was ordered out of the Persian Gulf by the regime several years ago is probably at the root of its desire to sail into every ocean. It sailed briefly into the Pacific Ocean, making a port call in China in 2013, and has announced a desire to sail south to Antarctica.
In March 2016, Sayyari said, “Our naval fleets have already sailed the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the China Sea and the South Indian and Pacific Oceans.” What he didn’t say was that, apart from the Red Sea trips, each of those visits lasted only a few days.
Sayyari claimed that a CNN program said, “Iran, by no means, is capable of entering the Atlantic Ocean and passing through it, but we arrived in the Atlantic, and we will go to the west of the ocean in the near future.” The Iran Times has not been able to find any such CNN statement.
