Drama in the Persian Gulf (Tehran gets uppity)
Considering what this is doing to the price per barrel of gasoline, and the potential plot twists where this could wind up down the road, a separate thread is warranted.
Quote:
The US military on Friday released a video it said shows Iran's Revolutionary Guards removing an unexploded mine from one of the oil tankers targeted in the Gulf of Oman. Tehran denied involvement, accusing the US of waging an "Iranophobic campaign".
https://www.france24.com/en/20190614...ng-iran-attack
Quote:
Shortly after the crews of the two tankers attacked this week in the Gulf of Oman evacuated their stricken vessels, the ships that rescued them were surrounded by Iranian military boats and told to transfer the mariners into their custody, according to declassified U.S. intelligence reports obtained on Friday by CBS News.
One of the civilian rescue ships eventually complied with the Iranian military's request. The other did not. The new details help to paint a picture of what happened Thursday in the Gulf, near the vital shipping channel of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a third of the world's oil supply passes.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tanker-...ce-2019-06-14/
Quote:
The Japanese owner of a tanker attacked in the Gulf of Oman claimed Friday that it was struck by a flying projectile, contradicting reports by U.S. officials and the military on the source of the blast.
Quote:
"We received reports that something flew towards the ship," said Yutaka Katada, president of Kokaku Sangyo Co. at a press conference. "The place where the projectile landed was significantly higher than the water level, so we are absolutely sure that this wasn’t a torpedo. I do not think there was a time bomb or an object attached to the side of the ship."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/j...-used-n1017556
Related?
Quote:
(Bloomberg) -- A group of hackers that shut down a Saudi Arabian oil and natural gas facility in 2017 is now targeting electric utilities, according to the cybersecurity company Dragos Inc.
The group, Xenotime, has been probing utilities in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific regions since late 2018, Hanover, Maryland-based Dragos said in a blog post Friday. They’ve focused mostly on electronic control systems that manage the operations at industrial sites, Dragos said.
U.S. officials have long warned grids are acutely vulnerable to cyber attacks. Disrupting a region’s electrical infrastructure could cause widespread chaos, triggering blackouts and crippling financial markets, transportation systems and more.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/hackers-...grid-1.1273504
Quote:
Dragos has shied away from naming any country that might be behind Xenotime's attacks. Despite initial speculation that Iran was responsible for the Triton attack on Saudi Arabia, security firm FireEye in 2018 pointed to forensic links between the Petro Rabigh attack and a Moscow research institute, the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics. If Xenotime is in fact a Russian or Russia-sponsored group, they would be far from the only Russian hackers to target the grid. The Russian hacker group known as Sandworm is believed to be responsible for attacks on Ukrainian electric utilities in 2015 and 2016 that cut power to hundreds of thousands of people, the only blackouts confirmed to have been triggered by hackers. And last year the Department of Homeland Security warned that a Russian group known as Palmetto Fusion or Dragonfly 2.0 had gained access to the actual control systems of American power utilities, bringing them much closer to causing a blackout than Xenotime has gotten thus far.
https://www.wired.com/story/triton-h...us-power-grid/
Stay tuned. This sounds like it's going to get stupid.
How merchant ships can keep safe in dangerous waters
I doubt many, indeed any readers of the Forum will need this, but it may help others understand the risks and how to mitigate them. Plus there are multiple links:https://theconversation.com/gulf-of-oman-attacks-how-merchant-ships-can-keep-safe-in-dangerous-waters-118952?
Turbulent Times - Brief Thoughts on the Gulf Security Situation
A British blogger's commentary that ends with:
Quote:
This remains a complex and fast moving situation, and more events will surely follow. But, for now, it is worth trying to capture some of the bigger issues as it moves along, and in time consider the lessons and impacts more broadly. Whatever else happens, the hope must be that this ends peacefully and not with an escalation into an ever more challenging proxy war, where the new threshold of gradually accepted use of low level violence suddenly leads to an accidental escalation of something significantly more widespread by accident.
Link:https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot....s-on-gulf.html
An IISS commentary by an ex-diplomat that ends - nearly - with:
Quote:
Whatever the strategy of either side, it is possible that with an increased amount of tension, rhetoric and military personnel in the region a miscalculation trips both sides into uncontrolled escalation. That is a legitimate concern that surfaced with the downing of the drone. But even in the event of miscalculation, the escalation need not be automatic.
Link:https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/...an-in-the-gulf
US against Iran: war by other means
A French newspaper article by a Canadian journalist familiar with the region; useful as gives a comprehensive overview of the region and more. After the recent White House announcement this is topical:
Quote:
Yet, countries under sanctions rarely concede to ‘outside interference’, ‘imperialist pressure’ or ‘economic terrorism’. As an instrument of national power, the imposition of sanctions is a blunt tool that achieves little other than privation and enmity.
(Later) While the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is significantly damaging the economy and causing suffering among ordinary Iranians, it has not altered Iran’s campaign of ‘maximum resistance’ — if anything, it has strengthened Iranian resolve to resist.
Link:https://mondediplo.com/outsidein/us-...by-other-means
Iran in the Gulf: signalling, skirmishing or war?
An IISS commentary that opens with:
Quote:
Iran has been engaged in a steady and escalating series of hostile acts in recent months. As John Raine explains, the principal messages behind them are ones of defiance and capability.
Link:https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/...n-in-the-gulf?
The march toward war continues
The rather pessimistic title comes from a 'Foreign Affairs' article (commended via Twitter and only the opening is free to view) and the article opens with:
Quote:
With each passing day, the United States and Iran draw each other deeper into conflict. So far, they have stopped short of war. But the likelihood of an armed conflict increases with every additional provocation, whether it is an attack on a civilian tanker ship or another round of sanctions.
Link:https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2019-06-28/us-and-iran-are-marching-toward-war?
Just who is going to join in? There is this rather unusual statement from Mossad:
Quote:
Israel and U.S.-aligned Arab countries have a unique chance to forge a regional peace deal given their shared worries about Iran, the chief of Israel’s Mossad spy service said on Monday.
Link:https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-is...-idUKKCN1TW2LI
Paul Rogers explains the potential for the UK being involved, alongside Oman and Qatar. He also notes this rather large movement of USAF explosives to a munitions depot in the UK, near to a RAF base used - at times - by USAF strategic bombers:
Quote:
Also relevant is one of the largest US Air Force munitions stockpile sites in Europe at RAF Welford, 35 km southeast of Fairford, in Berkshire. It may just be a coincidence that last month a US Air Force unit
moved a substantial quantity of munitions from the United States through a port of entry, reported to be Newport in South Wales, to Welford. In this five-day operation, the largest of its kind for a decade, 71 trucks moved 121 containers with 450,000 lb (204,000 kg) net explosive weight.
Link:https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org....tish-dimension
May be just a routine matter that move. I think not.
Too many questions after this
Does this strange story, originally in a Kuwaiti paper and now on National Interest's website have an effect on the current situation?
It starts with:
Quote:
Iranian Air Force commander Brigadier General Farzad Ismaili, who had been in office since 2010, has been fired by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after he kept secret that Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-35 stealth fighters had violated Iran’s airspace, the Kuwaiti daily Al Jarida reported on Saturday. The newspaper emphasized that it was the original media source that exposed the Israeli raids, which had taken place in March 2018.
The most puzzling sentence is this, with my bold:
Quote:
According to Al Jarida, Iranian intelligence received top secret information that the Israeli fighter planes even managed to photograph Iran’s underground bases. Khamenei, who received this information, now suspects a cooperation between Russia and Israel, and that the Russians gave Israel the secret code of the Russian radar in Iran – according to the Kuwaiti newspaper.
Link:https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...-iran-airspace
A nasty, brutal fight”: what a US-Iran war would look like
A pessimistic story which concludes:
Quote:
The bottom line: It’d be hell on earth
Link:https://www.vox.com/world/2019/7/8/1...p-nuclear-iraq
