pledged to close the Strait of Hormuz to surface traffic and has publicly
toyed with the idea of charging ships a toll to traverse the narrow waterway.
That chronic pain gnawing at officialdom’s guts is bipartisan. Presidential administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, keep trying to draw down the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf region in particular, to attend to more pressing priorities. Back in 2012 the Obama administration
vowed to “pivot” or “rebalance,” from the Middle East to the Pacific theater to counterbalance China. President Donald Trump and his lieutenants
proclaim that an age of great-power competition is upon us. Like their Democratic forerunners, they have signaled their desire to reapportion finite U.S. diplomatic and military resources elsewhere around the Eurasian perimeter say, to the South China Sea or Baltic Sea.
(This article first appeared in June 2019.)
Convoys are the worst of all strategies for protecting mercantile shipping against raiders. Except for all the others. The logic behind convoy duty is straightforward. To defeat, say, an irregular maritime force like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) or an Iranian-backed militia, defenders of a merchant fleet need superior firepower on scene at likely points of attack. If they outgun their antagonists, they will either win any tactical engagement or deter attack altogether.
This is far from a hypothetical discussion after attacks on six cargo ships in the past two months, along with the shootdown of a U.S. drone aircraft as recently as this Thursday. Maritime war is entirely thinkable in the Persian Gulf. If one breaks out, convoys could well comprise part of the strategic mix for the United States and any allies that join in.
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Brent Sadler, a senior fellow for naval warfare at The Heritage Foundation, said Tuesday that Iran‘s rulers could be engaged in a “good cop-bad cop” scheme aimed at threatening Washington into making concessions in the nuclear talks or face retaliation from Iranian hardliners and the IRGCN.
“It could be an effort to try and say, ‘If you don’t deal with the ‘moderate faction,’ you’re going to have to deal with these crazies over here,’” said Mr. Sadler, a retired U.S. Navy captain.
At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said officials remain troubled by the weekend incident in which IRGCN vessels launched a high-speed charge at the guided-missile submarine U.S.S. Georgia and its protective screen of U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships.
May 11, 2021
To quote the U.S. Navy s official announcement, on May 6 the cruiser USS Monterey seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea. The list of weaponry aboard the dhow included advanced Russian-made anti-tank missiles, around 3,000 Chinese assault rifles, several hundred light machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers and advanced optical sights. On a battlefield, those weapons set could arm a light infantry brigade of 4,000 soldiers or guerrilla fighters. Stateless is diplo-speak indicating the dhow had no flag or other sign of national origin. It suggests the dhow s crew had no valid cargo papers to show the U.S. Coast Guard Advanced Interdiction Team inspecting their vessel. When USN warships enter sea lanes plied by smugglers and pirates, they often have a Coast Guard team aboard with legal authority to address transnational criminal operation