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NICOSIA -- In the first such claim, Iran said it was imposing a blockade on unauthorized ships in the Strait of Hormuz. A senior commander for Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said all ships, including those from the U.S. Navy, must undergo inspection before proceeding through the strait. "The alien vessels which enter the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz always provide the needed answers and information to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps units," IRGC deputy navy commander Rear Adm. Alireza Tangsiri said.

How would the US military respond if Iran attacked US interests – in retaliation for, say, an Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities? What would a US counterattack look like? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington Monday to meet with President Obama – which comes in the midst of increasingly vocal warnings from Pentagon officials urging caution on any military action in the region – has brought these questions into sharp focus this week. These questions, too, were at the heart of one of the largest US military war-game exercises in a decade, meant to mirror the conditions...

Afonso de Albuquerque arrived at the Indian Ocean in 1506 commanding a squadron of five war vessels integrated in Tristão da Cunha's Armada. In the summer of 1507, after the conquest of Socotra, the Armada's main objective, Afonso de Albuquerque departed on his own commanding a fleet of six vessels and 500 marines to take the easternmost island at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, called by local folk Hormuz. Defeating a garrison of 15,000 men with his artillery, Albuquerque took Hormuz and commissioned the construction of a fortress. This island would eventually lend its name to one of the...

Even as it continued to talk with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Iran continued to prepare for war over its nuclear weapons program, training for kamikaze attacks in the Persian Gulf with both planes and speedboats, sources within the Iranian armed forces report. Ads by GooglePeople Search-Search Free 1) Enter Any Name & Search Free! 2) Get Phone, Address, Age & More. www.intelius.comA 9mm is False Protection Discover What Survivalist Masters & The Army Don't Want You To Know www.CloseCombatTraining.comTuesday the International Atomic Energy Agency called its recent talks with Iran a failure. And just days before, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah...

The US has begun beefing up its sea- and land-based defences in the Persian Gulf to counter any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. The American forces are also modifying weapons systems on warships so they could be used against Iranian fast-attack boats, as well as short-launched cruise missiles, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting US defence officials said. The paper said Pentagon had notified Congress of plans to pre-position new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, through which 20 percent of world's oil supply passes.

The Pentagon is beefing up U.S. sea- and land-based defenses in the Persian Gulf to counter any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military has notified Congress of plans to preposition new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to defense officials briefed on the requests, including one submitted earlier this month. The military also wants to quickly modify weapons systems on ships so they could be used against Iranian fast-attack boats, as well as shore-launched cruise missiles, the defense officials said. The readiness push is spearheaded by...

Iran has begun mass production of an anti-ship cruise missile, state television's website said on Saturday. The Zafar missile, as it is dubbed in the report, "is a short-range, anti-ship cruise missile capable of destroying small- and medium-sized targets with high precision." It can be mounted on speed boats and other light vessels, can withstand electronic warfare, and is able to fly in low altitudes to avoid detection, the report said. Iran has a fleet of speed boats that often challenge US and allied warships in the Gulf. The vessels are usually controlled by the elite Revolutionary Guards and can...

Obama administration officials would not confirm whether President Obama called for direct talks with Iran, after an Iranian lawmaker claimed Wednesday that the president floated the proposal in a secret letter to the Islamic Republic's supreme leader. The White House acknowledged the letter and reiterated that the door remains open for Iran to return to international talks over its nuclear program. "It remains available to Iran to this day," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, adding that the U.S. position has not changed. But he did not confirm whether the president called for direct talks. The letter also warned...

Face-Off With Iran Complicates Obama’s Re-election Campaign By MARK LANDLER WASHINGTON — The escalating confrontation with Iran poses a major new political threat to President Obama as he heads into his campaign for re-election, confronting him with choices that could harm either the economic recovery or his image as a firm leader. Sanctions against Iran’s oil exports that the president signed into law on New Year’s Eve started a fateful clock ticking. In late June, when the campaign is in full swing, Mr. Obama will have to decide whether to take action against countries, including some staunch allies, if they...

Iran said on Sunday it had received a letter from the U.S. government about the Strait of Hormuz, Foreign Ministry spokesman ...was quoted ... as saying Tehran had not yet decided if it would reply to the letter, the contents of which he did not detail. "America's message over the Strait of Hormuz reached us through three channels. It was given to our U.N. representative, the Swiss ambassador conveyed it to the Foreign Ministry and also Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gave the message to Iran,"

Israeli defense officials tell Channel 2 that Washington wants to avoid causing further tensions in region after various foreign reports of U.S. and Israeli preparations for strike on Iran.Israel and the United States have postponed a massive joint defense exercise, which was expected to be carried out in the coming weeks, in order to avoid an escalation with Iran, Channel 2 reported on Sunday. According to an Israeli defense official, Washington wants to avoid causing further tensions in the region, especially in light of the sensitive situation that has been generated after various reports in the international media that the...

If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy has a backup plan to save one-fifth of the world's daily oil trade: send in the dolphins. The threat of Iran closing the strait has reached a fever pitch, reports today's New York Times, with U.S. officials warning Iran's supreme leader that such moves would cross a "red line" provoking a U.S. response. Iran could block the strait with any assortment of mines, armed speed boats or anti-ship cruise missiles but according to Michael Connell at the Center for Naval Analysis, “The immediate issue [for the U.S. military] is to...

Velayat-e 90, the 11-day Iranian naval exercise that began on December 24, 2011 in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, has brought Iran and the United States close to a military conflict. While Tehran originally maintained that the war games were merely for defensive purposes, a number of Iranian politicians and senior military officers described the exercises explicitly as a warning to the West that the Iranian navy is capable of closing the Strait and obstructing the transportation of oil in response to U.S. sanctions on the country’s central bank and oil exports (Press TV, December 28, 2011; IRNA, December...

The carrier, along with the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, reaches the region as tensions are rising with Iran. Deployed San Diego-based ships in the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and Makin Island groups are now in the Middle East, the U.S. Fifth Fleet and Central Command has announced. The sailors, Marines and airmen aboard the ships arrive after Iranian officials recent threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for the world's oil supply, and warned a departing U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, not to return to the Persian Gulf.

INSIGHT, a top international provider of supply chain planning solutions for the world's foremost companies, believes that substantial supply chain problems will result if conflict breaks out in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent - 30 percent of the world's oil supply passes on a daily basis. Of more immediate concern to supply chain managers is the impact on global oil markets. While the consequences of military action in the Strait would be severe, even the threat of conflict has resulted in significant crude oil price increases in the past few weeks. Iran threatened last week to stop...

US, Russian French and British air and naval forces streamed to the Syrian and Iranian coasts over the weekend on guard for fresh developments at the two Middle East flashpoints. The Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov anchored earlier than planned at Syria's Tartus port on the Mediterranean Sunday, Jan. 8, arriving together with the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and frigate Yaroslav Mudry. To counter this movement, France consigned an air defense destroyer Forbin to the waters off Tartus. debkafile's military sources report a buildup in the last 48 hours of western naval forces opposite Iran in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea...

National Security: Portrayed as just a shuffling of priorities, the president's defense cuts reduce our two-war strategy to maybe one war and cross your fingers. Champagne corks are popping from Beijing to Tehran. Imagine a scenario in the not-too-distant future when an Iranian Shahab missile mated with an unexpectedly ready nuclear warhead is test-fired and detonates somewhere over the Indian Ocean. The next day Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz as China announces a blockade of Taiwan. The administration's defense cuts, or shifts in priorities as President Obama would have us believe, leaves us woefully unprepared for the unexpected in...

-excerpt- War games may propel the Iranian Navy into the headlines, but the challenge the Islamic Republic poses to international shipping is broader and growing; indeed, it has been building for a quarter of a century. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), Tehran and Baghdad each sought to target the other’s business partners. Between 1984 and 1988, in the so-called Tanker War, Iran’s navy and its parallel Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Navy (IRGC-N) developed a doctrine of maritime guerrilla warfare using speedboats, mines, antiship cruise missiles, and, on occasion, aircraft to target neutral or enemy shipping. -excerpt- Iranian tactics should also be...

The oil minister of the United Arab Emirates has announced that a new oil pipeline bypassing the Strait of Hormuz is nearly complete. The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline project would ship crude from the UAE’s main oil producing region to the port of Fujairah on the country’s eastern coast, bypassing the vital Strait. The timing of the announcement could not be more prescient; Iranian officials have recently made their most threatening remarks to date about “closing” the Strait of Hormuz as fresh U.S. and international sanctions have put the regime on the defensive. In recent weeks alone, the head...

The Royal Navy's most formidable warship is being sent to the Gulf for its first mission as tensions rise in the strategically vital region, it can be disclosed. Naval commanders believe the deployment of HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer, will send a significant message to the Iranians because of the firepower and world-beating technology carried by the warship.Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, has publicly warned Iran that any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would be "illegal and unsuccessful".