February 21-2014
It has been four weeks since the Iranian Navy said it had dispatched two ships to the Atlantic Ocean where they were supposed to sail up and down the East Coast of the United States.
But instead the ships seem to have disappeared.
Early this month, the commander’s of Iran’s Caspian Fleet told reporters the two ships had rounded the southern tip of Africa and entered the Atlantic. But last Tuesday, the commander of the Navy, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, contradicted that. He said the ships were in the Gulf of Oman last Tuesday.
More importantly, he said nothing about their sailing into the Atlantic. That was odd because, when the ships left Bandar Abbas January 21, the Atlantic was where the Navy said the ships were headed.
Some thought the government told the Navy to cancel the Atlantic trip for fear of provoking the Americans and making the nuclear talks harder.
But the US Navy really couldn’t care less if Iran has two small ships in the Atlantic, even if they are right off the coast in sight of land. Navy officers have pointed out to inquiring reporters that freedom of the seas is the first priority of the US Navy and the Iranians have just as much right to be in the Atlantic as any other Navy—including the Russian Navy.
But some insisted on seeing something sinister in the ships. The Washington Examiner carried a story saying the trip “poses a potential catastrophic threat to America from a nuclear or electromagnetic pulse attack” (EMP).
The story quoted Peter Pry, called “an expert on EMP attacks,” as saying the two ships were likely making a dry run in preparation for a future EMP attack.
There have been many EMP attacks in the world, all coming from the sun during solar storms. No man-made EMP attack has been launched outside a lab.
Meanwhile, in Iran the prospective Atlantic visit has been portrayed as a major development in the history of warfare—even though Iranian tankers sail around the world every day and US Navy warships have been circling the globe since the American revolution of the 1770s.