[Peace-discuss] US vs. Iran continues to heat up

[Barbara kessel]

Iran
7) U.S., Iran Do Persian Gulf Squeeze
The stakes are big and the waterway is small, so communication between
the two sides is a must to keep a lid on tensions.
Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-stennis11jul11,1,1466257.story

Iran and the United States remain so far apart on so many issues that
they refuse to talk about them. But in the cramped sea routes of the
Persian Gulf, U.S. and Iranian warship sailors and fighter pilots
speak to each other daily.

They have to. They're practically jostling one another in courteous
games of surveillance, counter-surveillance and geopolitical
posturing.

"We are operating very close to their territorial waters in a very
confined space with a tremendous amount of traffic, be it the small
dhows, be it the supertankers going up to the oil platforms," said
U.S. Navy Capt. Sterling Gilliam Jr., commander of air operations for
this nuclear-powered supercarrier and its associated ships.

"The margin of error is smaller in that the space is more confined.
That would be the case even if anyone was your ally, just because of
the sheer small size of the Arabian Gulf," Gilliam said, using an
alternative name for the body of water.

Nearly half of the U.S. Navy's 277 warships are stationed close to
Iran, alongside most of Tehran's estimated 140 naval surface ships and
six submarines, according to GlobalSecurity.org. More than five dozen
aircraft are aboard the Stennis, along with dozens more aboard the
Nimitz, another U.S. aircraft carrier in the gulf.

Crew members on the Stennis say they are here to provide aircraft for
peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Somalia.

But few doubt they are also here to send a message to Iran, which the
U.S. accuses of pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program and
supporting anti-American militants from Lebanon to Afghanistan.

A flotilla of nine U.S. warships steamed through the Strait of Hormuz
two months after the United Nations Security Council passed the last
round of sanctions against Iran for continuing with its uranium
enrichment program and Iranians seized 15 British sailors and marines
in disputed waters off Iraq.

Positioning two aircraft carrier groups in the gulf gives the United
States the capability to operate 24 hours a day and potentially
conduct about 180 daily bombing and surveillance operations over Iran.

It also means the United States may be deploying nuclear weapons,
believed to be aboard some of the ships in the aircraft carrier
groups, within 10 miles of Iran's shores.

But the aircraft carriers, each accompanied by four or five other
ships, could become big targets for Iran in the event of a war. "It's
going to be very hard to defend U.S. ships against small ships and
volleys of missiles in the confines of the Persian Gulf," said Joseph
Cirincione, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress, a
Washington think tank.

Stumbling into a hot conflict with the Iranians remains a constant
concern in the overcrowded gulf, where nearby oil wells glow orange in
the steamy night, and wooden dhows, steel-hull freighters and warships
navigate the waterway by day.

On the ship's computer maps, a thick black line delineates Iranian
coastal waters from the rest of the gulf. Shades of gray mark the
waters off Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, allies of the
United States. U.S. pilots are told to stay well away from Iranian
airspace. "We do worry about miscalculations," Cosgriff said. "That's
one of the reasons we want to be transparent on the radio and be
talking to them a lot."