Nomve,ber
20, 2023
A
massive US naval deployment in a wide arc of the so-called Greater Middle East
is under way — stretching from Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, into the Red
Sea and the Bab el Mandeb and into the
Gulf of Aden and all the way into the Gulf of Oman. This deterrent display may
transform as large scale offensive operations and aims to rework the
geopolitical alignments and bring them back to the traditional grooves of
intra-regional rivalries in the Gulf region.
Aircraft
carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower transits through the Suez Canal towards the
Persian Gulf , November 4, 2023
Ship
spotters first said that as of Thursday, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D.
Eisenhower and its escorts were sailing just outside the Strait of Hormuz in
the Gulf of Oman, and were approaching the Persian Gulf. A Pentagon official
confirmed the location but would not say whether the carrier will enter the
Persian Gulf passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The
US naval build-up in the region consists of another carrier strike group as
well — USS Ford and its escorts — which last week moved away from Israeli coast
and is now re-positioned to the south of Crete, according to ship spotters,
apparently beyond the missile reach of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Apart
from the two carrier strike groups, the US deployment also includes a
three-ship Bataan Amphibious Ready Group with the 26th Marine Expeditionary
Unit and several guided-missile destroyers — USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall
operating in the northern portion of the Red Sea, and USS Mesa Verde in the
Eastern Mediterranean along with the command ship USS Mount Whitney.
Additionally,
there are some number of US attack submarines in the region, but the Pentagon
does not typically disclose their locations — except for a rare disclosure
recently by the US Central Command of the transit on November 5 of nuclear
guided-missile submarine USS Florida to the east of Suez.
The
most obvious explanation for such a formidable naval buildup is that it is part
of the US effort to keep the current conflict in southern Israel and Gaza
contained. Hezbollah continues to fire rockets and anti-tank missiles into
Israel from Lebanon; Iran-backed Shia militant groups are attacking US bases in
Iraq and Syria; and Houthi rebels in Yemen are firing missiles towards Israel.
During the period since October 17, there have been at least 58 attacks on US
bases, mostly in Iraq.
The
hardline opinion in the US is that the militant groups attacking the US forces
are acting at Iran’s behest. This allegation is an old US-Israeli bogey and
keeps surging whenever Iran is in the crosshairs and/or there is requirement of
a blame game. Expert opinion, including in the US, has always been wary of it.
Longtime
observers estimate that while Tehran is openly helping the various resistance
groups operating in the Middle East to push back the US and Israel, that does
not exactly make these groups “Iranian proxies”. Thus, it transpired that Iran
was taken by surprise by the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7. According to Reuters, at a recent meeting in
Tehran with Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of the group’s political bureau,
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei brought this up.
At
any rate, it is a known fact that the US establishment is well aware of the
ground realities of its state of play with Iran and has not hesitated to use
back channels to lean on Tehran to use its good offices with the Shia militant
groups operating in Iraq to exercise restraint. But the bottom line is that
Iran too has its limitations in such extraordinary times such as today when
hatred and anger towards the US and Israel has risen to a crescendo in the
Muslim countries.
Interestingly,
coinciding with the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
and its escorts in the waters off the Strait of Hormuz, the International
Maritime Security Construct [IMSC] — a consortium of countries headquartered in
Bahrain, whose official stated aim is the maintenance of order and security in
the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden and Southern Red Sea, particularly
regarding maritime security of global oil supply routes — issued an advisory on
Thursday for vessels travelling through the approaches to Bab al Mandeb and Red
Sea and specifically advising that “when choosing routes, orient toward
creating maximum feasible distance from Yemeni waters.”
Two
days later, the Israeli military has said that Yemen’s Houthis had actually
seized a cargo ship in the southern Red Sea as it was sailing from Turkiye to
India; although the military added that the vessel was not Israeli-owned and
had no Israelis among its crew, ownership details in public shipping databases
associated the ship’s owners with Ray Car Carriers, which was founded by
Abraham “Rami” Ungar, who is known as one of the richest men in Israel.
It
doesn’t need much ingenuity to figure out that the US, which is already
smarting under the humiliation of the Houthis shooting down a US MQ-9 Reaper
drone over international waters recently, is moving against the Houthis. This
needs some explaining.
The
point is, IMSC is a US-led “coalition of the willing” outside the purview of
the mission of the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations
specialised agency “to promote safe, secure, environmentally sound, efficient
and sustainable shipping through cooperation.”
It
was established in 2019 against the backdrop of the war in Yemen and comprises,
amongst others, the UAE and Saudi Arabia from the Gulf region. Its leitmotif
was to counter the Iran-Houthi axis during the Saudi-Emirati intervention in
Yemen — essentially, as part of the US’ containment strategy against Iran
dominating the regional politics at that time.
Significantly,
if the Biden Administration plans to hit the Houthis and makes it look as a
retaliatory / punitive strike and to that end, it is invoking the IMSC
platform, which belongs to a bygone era before the Saudi-Iran rapprochement
brokered by China, that becomes a
brilliant geopolitical ploy where the US hopes to achieve multiple objectives
kill many birds with a single arrow.
These
objectives range from bringing down Iran by a notch or two in the regional
folklore of power dynamic; driving a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Iran at a
juncture when the amity between the two
traditional rivals is frustrating the US plans to “integrate” Israel;
res-establishing the shock and awe of US power in the Middle East (and
globally); keeping the Red Sea shipping lines open for Israeli vessels; and, in
strategic terms, dominating the waterways of the Red Sea leading to the Suez
Canal.
By
the way, Red Sea is lately witnessing big power contestation — China has a
naval base in Djibouti and Russia hopes to establish a submarine base in Sudan;
Eritrea is a virulently anti-US littoral state on Red Sea; and, US is
desperately trying for a regime change in Ethiopia, the largest country in the
African continent, which is on very
friendly terms with Russia.
A
quagmire for the US?
Even
more curious is the timing of the US aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf
region. The Chinese foreign ministry announced on Sunday that a delegation
consisting of Arab and Islamic foreign ministers will visit China from November
20 to 21 to hold “in-depth communication and coordination” with Beijing “on
ways to deescalate the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, protect civilians
and seek a just settlement of the Palestinian question.” The delegation
comprises Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordanian
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign
Minister Sameh Shoukry, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Palestinian
Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki and Secretary General of the Organisation of
Islamic Cooperation Hussein Brahim Taha.
The
above development is a Saudi initiative. There is no question that the
collective outreach by the Muslim countries to China as their principal
interlocutor at the present stage of the Palestine-Israel conflict is a
diplomatic rebuff to the US. Succinctly put, the Arab unity is also becoming a
thorn in the flesh for President Biden at a time when the US finds it
increasingly difficult to block the Chinese-Arab push for a ceasefire in Gaza
and counter the international condemnation of Israel’s horrific violence
against the Palestinian people, especially in the Global South.
By
attacking the Houthis of Yemen, the Biden administration’s game plan is to
undermine the Saudi-Iran rapprochement by playing on the Saudi antipathy toward
the Houthis on the one hand and taunting Tehran on the other hand. Basically,
the US hopes to pay Iran back in the same coin.
As
an opinion piece in the Hill put it, “It is time Biden and his principal
advisers on his national security team… must assume an active defence by
striking Iranian proxies hard and unapologetically, when they present a threat,
not after they have already attacked. And probable cause must be good enough
for protecting our service members manning remote bases in Iraq and Syria…
bloody nose is the only response Iran understands, and precisely the response
the US must deliver.” (here)
The
Biden Administration must be sensing already that the Israeli operations
against Hamas are not getting anywhere and may turn into a long day’s journey
into night, thanks to the Zionist state’s stubborn refusal to confront its
guilt and shame or accept a two-state solution to the Palestine issue. The
American public opinion is becoming sceptical about Biden’s handling for the
situation and the US’ allies feel troubled. Indeed, Israel itself is a deeply
divided house.
Meanwhile,
the US’ diplomatic isolation in the Middle East is touching an unprecedented level today. The big question
is whether through coercion — “smart power” — it is possible to retrieve lost
ground where the crux of the matter is that the US is not trusted anymore in
the Middle East. Moreover, Iran holds the patent for “smart power,” which it
has finessed as a diplomatic tool through the past four decades successfully to
ward off existential challenges from the US.
The
US risks getting entangled with the resistance groups, which have nothing to
lose and everything to gain by creating a quagmire for Washington. The heart of
the matter is that the resistance groups are operating in their native lands
and enjoy vast networks of social support. This, therefore, becomes an unequal
battle, in the final analysis. Whether it is worth taking the risk — all for
the sake of boosting the sagging Israeli morale — should be a soul-searching
question for the Biden Administration before embarking on yet another forever
war in the Middle East.
No comments:
Post a Comment