Burning Tankers, the Strait of Hormuz situation 6/2019

TerraN_EmpirE said:

You are assuming that I am pro war. But thus far I have produced what is available which is more than the counter narrative thus far. I am however waiting for forensics on the hills of the ships.

If I am hankering for anything it’s having more than just rhetoric of False flag operations Innuendo and insults or attempts at such don’t mean much when it’s just a bag of Popular bunk meant to cater only to the echo chamber of like minded.

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US Navy expert: Tanker attack mine resembles Iranian mines
By JON GAMBRELL17 minutes ago

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U.S. NAVY 5TH FLEET BASE NEAR FUJAIRAH, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The limpet mines used to attack a Japanese-owned oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz last week bore “a striking resemblance” to similar mines displayed by Iran, a U.S. Navy explosives expert said Wednesday, stopping short of directly blaming Tehran for the assault.

Iran has denied being involved in the attack last Thursday that hit the Japanese tanker Kokuka Courageous and also the Norwegian-owned Front Altair.

The comments by Cmdr. Sean Kido came as the Navy showed reporters pieces of debris and a magnet they say Iran’s Revolutionary Guard left behind when they spirited away an unexploded limpet mine after the June 13 attack in the Gulf of Oman. Iran has also not acknowledged taking the mine.
Kido also stressed that the damage done to the Kokuka Courageous was “not consistent with an external flying object hitting the ship,” despite the ship’s owner blaming “flying objects” for the damage in the attack.

Meanwhile, a rocket hit an oil-drilling site in Iraq’s southern Basra province early on Wednesday, striking inside a compound housing energy giant Exxon Mobil and other foreign oil companies and wounding three local workers, one seriously, Iraqi officials said.

The attack on the oil tankers came against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran that take root in President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers a year ago.

Iran recently has quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium and threatened to boost its enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels, trying to pressure Europe for new terms to the 2015 deal.

In recent weeks, the U.S. has sped an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and deployed additional troops to the tens of thousands already here. Mysterious attacks also have targeted oil tankers as Iranian-allied Houthi rebels launched bomb-laden drones into Saudi Arabia.

All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict, some 40 years after Tehran’s Islamic Revolution.

The U.S. Navy briefed foreign journalists on Wednesday at a 5th Fleet base near Fujairah, an Emirati port city some 210 kilometers (130 miles) northeast of the capital, Abu Dhabi. There, they showed journalists debris recovered from the Kokuka Courageous, which they described as including aluminum and composite metals.

They also showed a magnet they described as being left behind by the Revolutionary Guard — one of six apparently used to stick the unexploded limpet mine to the ship’s hull. Sailors said it took two of them and a crowbar to pry it off the ship.

Those pieces put together have U.S. sailors suspecting the limpet mine came from Iran.

They showed a picture previously shared among weapons experts of a limpet mine on display in Iran, which they said resembled the one they suspected was used on the ship. That picture showed a conical mine, some 42 kilograms (90 pounds) in weight, on display with a sign next to it identifying it as being produced by a research company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.

“The limpet mine that was used does bear a striking resemblance to that which has been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades,” Kido said. “There are distinguishing features.”

Kido declined to elaborate. Iran’s mission to the U.N. declined to comment, referring reporters instead to remarks by Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami, who said allegations about Tehran’s involvement in the tanker attacks was an unfair accusation and “totally a lie” meant to tarnish Iran’s image.

According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Hatami questioned the authenticity of a grainy video released by the U.S. following the attack and purporting to show Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces removing an unexploded limpet mine from one of the tankers.

“The date and the location shown in the footage have not been authenticated,” he said. The Americans “can show any footage ... but it cannot be used as evidence.”

The mines were placed above the vessel’s water line. One exploded, punching through the double-hulled ship and sparking a brief fire. The placement of the mines on the vessel makes it “not appear that the intention was to sink the vessel,” Kido said.

“The damage we observed is consistent with a limpet mine attack; it is not consistent with an external flying object hitting the ship,” Kido said.

Authorities also recovered a hand print and fingerprints, he said. “We recovered biometric information ... which can be used to build a criminal case to hold the individuals responsible accountable.” He did not offer more details.

The second vessel involved in the attack, the Norwegian-owned Front Altair, caught fire and sent black smoke up into the air that was visible from space by satellites. Kido did not explain why the U.S. had no immediate evidence from that vessel. Both are now anchored off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates.

He also declined to discuss an earlier, May 12 attack on four oil tankers off the coast of Fujairah near the U.S. base, which America similarly blames on an Iranian limpet mine attack. Analysts also believe those attacks came from limpet mines.

In Iraq on Wednesday, a Katyusha rocket landed at dawn in the Zubair and Rumeila oil fields camp, operated by the Iraqi Drilling company, where Exxon Mobil and other companies have caravans housing their workers, security official Mahdi Raykan said.

Exxon Mobil, based in Irving, Texas, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In May, it evacuated staff from the West Qurna 1 oil field in Basra province.
As Washington-Tehran tensions escalated, there have been concerns that Iraq could once again get caught in the middle between its two top allies. The country hosts more than 5,000 U.S. troops, and is home to powerful Iranian-backed militias, some of whom want those U.S. forces to leave.

In May, the U.S. evacuated nonessential diplomatic staff from Iraq. That came before a missile landed in Baghdad’s Green Zone, near the sprawling U.S. Embassy.

No one claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack and Iraqi oil exports were unaffected.

___

Associated Press writer Qassem Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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solarz said:

@TerraN_EmpirE So what do you think about the Japanese operators saying they were hit by a flying object? Doesn't that contradict the US narrative? So far I have seen nothing to explain this glaring discrepancy.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Detail to be pointed out here is.
If it was a Limpet mine it might have to those aboard the Tankers, looked like they were hit by a projectile. When the mine detonates it would produce fragmentation that would be blown away from the ship but as this is a high speed event the brain doesn’t always comprehend what it sees so something going out can look to an observer like it’s coming in.
Basically until a actual damage inspection don’t put to much faith in eye witness claims.

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This ain’t the 1980s anymore.

That’s the message from one of the top U.S. military officials who called on the international community to help secure the free movement of goods and oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the Arabian Gulf, saying that the U.S. doesn’t depend on it to the same extent when it launched a major tanker escort mission in the late 1980s.

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, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a roundtable that countries that benefit most from the movement of oil through the Gulf need to take an active role in its security.

“We have maintained across the sea lanes of the world a position of defending freedom of navigation,” Selva said. “Specifically, in the Strait of Hormuz and the [Arabian] Gulf, we’ve taken on an international responsibility of ensuring freedom of navigation and the movement of oil in and out of the Gulf. That doesn’t mean it’s a U.S.-only problem. If we take this on as a U.S.-only responsibility, nations that benefit from that movement of oil through the Persian Gulf are bearing little or no responsibility for the economic benefit they gain from the movement of that oil.” (The Arabian Gulf and the Persian Gulf are the same body of water.)

The U.S. blames Iran for a series of attacks on commercial shipping in the region, including attacks on a Norwegian and a Japanese tanker near the Strait of Hormuz in mid-June. The attacks have had ripple effects through the shipping industry and set off a series of back-and-forth accusations between the Trump administration and the Iranian government. Iran denies involvement in the attacks.

Despite the increased tensions, Selva said things have changed since the U.S. launched Operation Earnest Will, a mission in the 1980s where it reflagged Kuwaiti tankers as American ships and had the U.S. Navy escort them. The mission was in response to threats to shipping during the Iran-Iraq War.

“The circumstances are very different now than they were in the 1980s,” Selva said. "If you think back to the reflagging operation, the ‘Tanker War,’ as it was nicknamed, where we reflagged and escorted tankers so that they could flow in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, we got a substantial amount of our oil from the Persian Gulf.

“We are now in a position where the bulk of that oil goes to … countries in Asia, and none of those countries have shown any predilection to pressing Iran to stop what they are doing. What was true in the 1980s, is not true today. We are not wholly dependent on the movement of Saudi, Kuwaiti, Qatari and Emirati oil in and out of the Gulf to sustain our economy.”

China is among the largest importers of oil from the Gulf states. The U.S. has steadily pulled back from buying Gulf oil for decades, and now most estimates put U.S. imports from the region at a little more than 10 percent of total consumption. About 41 percent of U.S. oil imports come from Canada.

The changing circumstances mean that something like Earnest Will is probably not in the cards, Selva said.

Instead, the international community needs to come up with a response together, he added.

“I think there is a military role in defending freedom of navigation,” he said. "The question will be to what extent the international community is behind that effort.

“I’m not suggesting for a moment that we don’t have a significant role to play in that space. But it will require an international consensus before force is used with one specific caveat: If the Iranians come after U.S. citizens, U.S. assets or U.S. military, we reserve the right to respond with a military action. They need to know that, it needs to be very clear.”

Selva defended U.S. intelligence assessments that Iran was behind the attack, saying Iran was the only power in the region with a motive to attack tankers and that evidence overwhelmingly pointed to Iran as the culprit. Still, he said, U.S. troops moving to the area is a strictly defensive measure.

“We have to be cautious that we respond only as appropriate,” he said. “What we have done is deploy to the region forces that beef up the defenses of our own forces.”

Selva acknowledged that the risk of miscalculation between U.S. and Iranian forces is present, but warned that the U.S. would only act in defense of its forces.

“Engaging our forces, engaging our national interests in the region, is a dangerous thing to do,” Selva said. “The extent to which [Iran] believes they can get away with engaging our force without us responding puts both parties in a place of severe miscalculation. So they shouldn’t engage in that activity.”

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"We take these acts very seriously, there is strong evidence,"

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Covered.
Their are any number of possible reasons why that report can be wrong.
The Operators are half a world away reciting early reports from a panicked crew.
Emphasizing those reports will spin into conspiracy theory assuming they Eyewitness reports are absolute.

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solarz said:

So you are basically dismissing eye witness reports in favor of a US-led investigation.

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solarz said:

I think it's a pretty big stretch to say eye witnesses would mistake something flying away for something flying toward them.

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The president of the Tokyo-based shipping firm Kokuka Sangyo says its tanker was hit by an incoming projectile. He says several crew members witnessed the source of the second blast.

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Yutaka Katada, president of Kokuka Sangyo said, "I've received reports that they saw something come flying toward them, then there was an explosion, and then there was a hole in the vessel."

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