announced 14 months ago to sail Iranian warships off the US coast.
Despite proclamations to make the Iranian Navy a worldwide power, it has so far only sent ships as far as the Eastern Mediterranean. On two occasions in the past year, a pair of vessels has sailed through the Suez Canal into the Med, docked in Syria for a few days, then departed and quickly sailed south again back through the Suez Canal.
Saturday, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian Navy, said, “We have the capability to hoist Iran’s flag in regions from the North Pole to the South Pole, and we are preparing for a presence near the South Pole.” Actually, the South Pole is in the middle of the frozen continent of Antarctica, so ships cannot get within 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) of it.
In July 2011, the Iranian Navy said it can position Iranian ships just three miles off the US East Coast if it chooses to, although it says the United States doesn’t have any such right to position ships three miles off Iran’s Persian Gulf coast.
Earlier this month, Sayyari said Iran would put warships off the US coast “within the next few years.”
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, commander of the Pasdar maritime arm, told an audience in Yazd in April 2011, “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 to sail ships up and down the US East Coast to prove its might, but it hasn’t yet done so. The ships of the Islamic Republic have sailed around the western Indian Ocean frequently and have twice spent a few days in the Mediterranean, but have not yet ever gone anywhere near the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.
While Fadavi claims the right to sail off the US coast, the Pasdaran deny that right to other countries. The Pasdaran said earlier this year that no US aircraft carrier could 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 denies 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, 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 received 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.