It said the new base could be used to support a team of SEALs, the special forces group that killed Osama Bin Laden and that raided a militant base in Somalia last month to free two hostages.
But Admiral John Harvey, the US Fleet Forces command chief, said the Post exaggerated the mission of the floating base. He said its mission was to support mine clearance if Iran should ever try to mine the Strait of Hormuz.
As for the Post story, he said, “I think they put two and two together and got 22. It [the floating base] is not going over there as a special operating forces Deathstar Galactica coming through the Gulf.”
The Iran Times reported on the Post story last week on Page Six. But the Iran Times also quoted an unnamed source as telling it that the “most likely” use of the floating base was to monitor the Strait of Hormuz 24 hours a day to “nip any effort at mining in the bud.”
The same source told the Iran Times this week that the US Navy created a similar floating base in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s after Iran first dropped mines in the waterway.
This source said the purpose of the base was not to remove mines after they were laid, but to catch Iranian minelayers as soon as they started dropping mines and to put them—both mines and minelayers—out of action.
It was operators from that floating base that caught the Iranian ship Iran Ajr in 1987 as it dropped mines in the water on a dark and moonless night, setting off an international uproar against the Islamic Republic as it was caught red-handed doing just what it had denied doing.
The US Navy has issued the contract for the conversion of the ship USS Ponce into a floating base on an expedited basis and Admiral Harvey said it should be ready to sail to the Persian Gulf this June.