January 24-2014
Almost three years after announcing plans to dispatch naval vessels to the Atlantic Ocean, the Iranian Navy said Tuesday that two ships have now set sail to go there for the first time in the Islamic Republic’s history.
State broadcasting said the destroyer Sabalan and the logistic helicopter carrier Kharg have been dispatched on a three-month voyage. The Sabalan is actually much smaller than a destroyer by modern standards and the Kharg is actually a supply ship with one helicopter on board. The Sabalan displaces 1,100 tons; the new US Navy destroyer Zumwalt displaces 14,600 tons.
State TV said the ships carry some 30 naval academy cadets for training. It did not mention any ports of call. And it did not say how long the two ships would be in the Atlantic, just that they would be away from Iran for three months, which is a very long deployment by Iranian Navy standards.
Iran has previously sent two ships into the Pacific. They sailed to one port in China, spent a few days there and then promptly returned to the Indian Ocean. Iran has twice sent ships into the Mediterranean. Each time they made a port visit in Syria and then sailed back through the Suez Canal after spending only a few days in the Mediterranean.
Iran says it aims to demonstrate the ability to project its military power across the region and beyond. But brief visits by one small warship accompanied by a supply vessel have not stirred any concern.
In July 2011, Iran said it aimed to put warships in the Atlantic and in April 2012 it 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 needed, 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.
The Iranian Navy announced in July 2011 that Iran planned “soon” to sail ships up and down the US East Coast to prove its might.
While Fadavi claimed the right to sail off the US coast, the Pasdaran deny the right of other countries to sail in the Persian Gulf. The Pasdaran have proclaimed that no US aircraft carrier may enter the Persian Gulf without first receiving permission from Iran.
When a carrier sailed into the Persian Gulf a few weeks later, Iran claimed that the Americans had asked for and received permission to do so. The US Navy denied that. The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway under international law and no ship requires permission from any country to sail through it.
Fadavi went even further in his claims in April 2012, saying the US Navy needed Pasdar permission to sail anywhere within the Persian Gulf. “Today even the Americans admit and acknowledge that the Persian Gulf is under the tight control of the Pasdar maritime arm,” Fadavi said. “This doesn’t mean inspections [of US ships], but controlling them. That is to say, they should receive our permission and account to us for any move they want to make.”
But the United States doesn’t acknowledge any such thing. Like all other countries of the world, including Iran’s neighbors across the Persian Gulf, it sees the Persian Gulf as an international waterway open to ships of all nations under the principle of the freedom of the seas.