While most American media is currently obsessed over an astronaut‘s love affair, the rest of the world is quite busy doing other things.
Back at the end of 2005, the nation of Iran signed an approximately 700 million dollar deal to purchase Russian-made Tor-M1 missile systems.  

You can click here to see the details but essentially they are mobile vehicles with an array of missiles whose sole purpose is to shoot down either aircraft or cruise missiles.  They are analogous to (and superior than) the Patriot missile batteries that the United States manufactures.

These missiles are very short range (about 6 miles) and are therefore entirely defensive in purpose.

On January 16 of this year, Russia delivered 29 of these missile batteries.  The United States, in particular State Department spokesperson Sean McCormick, threatened Russia with unspecified sanctions because of this.  Russia blasted right back and stated the obvious, that the sale of defensive short-range missiles is perfectly legitimate.  Despite this, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Rosoboronexport, the state-run arms exporting division.

Of course it is mighty odd that the United States should have any say-so about any foreign nation that wishes to do business with Iran.  The United States doesn’t even have diplomatic relations with Iran yet it has a stupid law that is the supposed “justification” for the sanctions.  Even though if you read it, it clearly only references ballistic and/or cruise missiles, not short-range defensive ones.

So why does this matter?  Because today Iran conducted a joint naval-land military drill and successfully tested the new Tor-M1 missiles (the naval version is nicknamed the “Hedgehog” in Russian).  The drill will continue until tomorrow and is specifically designed to test the interception of aircraft, cruise missiles and UAV (pilot-less drone aircraft).

Last August Iran test-fired its own Thunderbolt, a short-range (30 miles) surface to surface missile.  Then they test-fired a submarine launched missile.  In November they test-fired the Shahab-3 ballistic missile with a range of 2,000km.  

Today’s drills are being conducted near the Strait of Hormuz.  This is interesting because the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier, as well as its “strike group” (several other vessels and aircraft) have just arrived in the Persian Gulf as well.  Already in the Persian Gulf is the Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its strike or battle group.

That’s a lot of heavily armed ships in a very small piece of real estate.

Although the Strait of Hormuz is technically 21 miles wide (at its narrowest point), functionally almost all traffic is conducted via two 1-mile-wide channels.  And on the north side of the Strait is Iran.  20% of all the world’s petroleum is shipped daily through this narrow sea lane, including the exports from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq.

For the record, the last time the United States’ military fought the nation of Iran was in the Strait of Hormuz.  It was dubbed Operation Praying Mantis and was a one-day battle in 1988.  During the Iraq-Iran war, the United States sided with Iraq and U.S. naval vessels escorted Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil tankers through the Persian Gulf.  One U.S. vessel hit an Iranian sea mine and was heavily damaged but not one person was killed.

In retaliation, the U.S. launched Praying Mantis and attacked the Iranian navy.  Two Iranian ships and up to six armed speedboats were sunk by the U.S. Navy.  Furthermore, a number of Iranian oil platforms were blown up.  The number of Iranians who were killed is unknown.  Two Americans lost their lives but it was due to a single helicopter crashing and it had not been shot down.

The Iran-Iraq war ended just four months later, partly because this battle had given the United States unchallenged naval dominance over the Persian Gulf.

As these two nations get their heavily armed boats bumping up next to one another in a kind of macho showdown, it’s worth looking back briefly at the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war.

First of all, in 1975, when Iran was being run by the US-friendly Shah, Henry Kissinger “sanctioned” Iran’s attacking of Iraq’s only port.  Later however an agreement was signed and control went back to Iraq.  Saddam Hussein was at this time only the vice president of Iraq.

In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini led a revolution in Iran and kicked out the dictator Shah.

In 1980, the U.S. National Security Advisor worked with Iraq’s president (Saddam Hussein) to sponsor a coup against (then ruler of Iran) Ayatollah Khomeini.  The plan (codenamed Najeh) failed when Soviet spies informed the Ayatollah and he had the plotters rounded up before they could strike.

Since that didn’t work, Iraq went ahead and invaded Iran.  Saddam Hussein said he would be in Tehran (Iran’s capital) in three days largely because he felt that the repressed people of Iran would rise up to support the invasion.  It didn’t work.  Even the ethnic Arab Sunnis of Iran’s bordering province of Khuzestan fought against Iraq for the most part.  Within a month, over 100,000 Iranian citizens of all ethnicities and religious stripes had volunteered to fight off the invasion.

Initial Iraqi successes were reversed and Iran got the upper hand.  By 1982, the United States was offering weapons, intelligence, money and every other kind of support to Saddam Hussein.  Ronald “Saint” Reagan even said the United States would do “whatever was necessary” to prevent Iran from winning.

Iraq (with direct help from the CIA) began using chemical weapons, especially mustard gas, to try to reverse Iranian incursions.  Although the Kurds of Halabja have received the bulk of the world’s sympathy for being the victims of Hussein’s chemical madness, it must be remembered that the bulk of the ones dying from these weapons were Iranians – approximately 100,000 people, many of then unarmed civilians.

And last but not least, nearly every senior member of today’s Iranian government, including President Ahmadinejad, is a veteran of that war.  We here may not remember, but they sure do.

Let’s hope that someone, somewhere can prevent this new war with Iran before it ever has a chance to start.

Pax