although it says the United States doesn’t have any such right to position ships three miles off Iran’s Persian Gulf coast.
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, commander of the Pasdar maritime arm, told an audience in Yazd last week, “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 last July that Iran planned soon 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 to 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 a few months ago 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 last week, 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.
Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Pasdar air force, said his air units are fully capable of disabling US aircraft carriers. “First, sinking an aircraft carrier is not a complicated task,” he said. “Second, an aircraft carrier is equipped with so many advanced, delicate and sensitive devices … that it could be incapacitated by even the smallest explosion.”
Actually, it is extremely difficult to sink a carrier, though Hajizadeh is correct that a small explosion, at the right location, might disable one. The challenge is reaching a carrier, which is at the center of a massive air and sea protective net, and getting the explosive at the right point.