Debka: Massive US Military Buildup on Two Strategic Islands: Socotra and Masirah

 

While quietly casting lines to draw Tehran into talks on their nuclear dispute, PresidentBarack Obama is reported exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and Washington sources to have secretly ordered US air, naval and marine forces to build up heavy concentrations on two strategic islands – Socotra, which is part of a Yemeni archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and the Omani island of Masirah at the southern exit of the Strait of Hormuz.
Socotra is situated 80 kilometers east of the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometers southeast of the Yemeni coastline. It lies athwart the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. A military base there is in a position to oversee the shipping moving in and out of those strategic naval waterways.
Lushly verdant, Socotra is approximately 120 kilometers long by 40 kilometers wide. Its population of 55,000 has its own distinct language and culture. Since 2010, the US has been quietly building giant air force and naval bases on Socotra with facilities for submarines, intelligence command centers and take-off pads for flying stealth drones, as part of a linked chain of strategic US military facilities in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
The Socotra facilities are so secret that they are never mentioned in any catalogue listing US military facilities in this part of the world, which include Jebel Ali and Al Dahfra in the United Arab Emirates; Arifjan in Kuwait; and Al Udeid in Qatar – all within short flying distances from Iran.
Additional US forces are also being poured into Camp Justice on the barren, 70-kilometer long Omani island of Masirah, just south of the Hormuz entry point to the Gulf of Oman from the Arabian Sea.
US military facilities were established there after the signing of an access agreement with Oman in 1980.

Up to 100,000 US troops present by early March

For the new buildup on Socotra, Washington had to negotiate a new deal with Yemen's ousted ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Injured in an assassination attempt last year, Saleh demanded permission to travel to the United States for medical treatment. The Obama administration first refused, then relented when Saleh made it his condition for consenting to additional troops landing on the island.
Western military sources familiar with the American buildup on the two strategic islands tellDEBKA-Net-Weekly that, although they cannot cite precise figures, they are witnessing the heaviest American concentration of might in the region since the US invaded Iraq in 2003.
Then, 100,000 American troops were massed in Kuwait ahead of the invasion. Today, those sources estimate from the current pace of arrivals on the two island bases, that 50,000 US troops will have accumulated on Socotra and Masirah by mid-February. They will top up the 50,000 military already present in the Persian Gulf region, so that in less than a month, Washington will have some 100,000 military personnel on the spot and available for any contingency.
US air transports are described as making almost daily landings on Socotra and Masirah. They fly in from the US naval base of Diego Garcia, one of America's biggest military facilities, just over 3,000 kilometers away. The US military presence in the region will further expand in the first week of March when three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups plus a French carrier arrive in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea: They are theUSS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, USS Enterprise and the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
A fourth US carrier will be standing by in the Pacific Ocean, a few days' sailing time from the water off Iran's coast.

Obama may debunk Republican charges that he is weak on Iran

By early March, therefore, America will have piled up enough military strength within reach of Iran to exercise its consistently avowed military option.
Tuesday, Jan. 24, in his State of the Union address, the president said: “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”
Our military sources have also picked up reports of British and French air, naval and special forces landings this month in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
All these military concentrations and Obama's latest word on the Iranian nuclear issue tend to confirm that nothing has changed since DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington first reported in November 2011 on the US president's resolve to attack Iran's nuclear facilities in the course of 2012.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 515 of Nov. 4: Targeting Tehran: Obama Set to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Sites by the fall of 2012),
The only difference may be the possibility of the date moving up from fall to spring, depending on three developments:
1. The outcome of the secret exchanges taking place between Washington and Tehran on which we have reported exclusively;
2. An Israeli decision to go ahead with a unilateral strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
President Obama has not been able to convince Israel to drop this option and leave military action entirely to the United States.
3. The US presidential election campaign: Obama may decide to go for an attack to cripple Iran's nuclear program and preempt its production of a bomb to gain a winning hand for trumping his Republican rivals' accusation that he is weak on Iran.

 

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told Al-Arabiya television last week that the Saudi government takes Iran's threats seriously. He pointed in particular to the words of Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who warned that Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi's promise to boost oil production by 2.7 million barrels a day (bpd) to make up for any shortfall caused by sanctions on Iran, would "create all possible problems later."
Prince Turki said he personally did not believe the oil kingdom would engage in military action but added:
"It's a direct threat to our national interests and a direct threat to our industrial installations on the coast."
Other Saudi officials in Riyadh were less diplomatic: "Iran's threats could be interpreted by Saudi Arabia as an act of war," said a senior Saudi defense official bluntly.
This week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report, Saudi Arabia began deploying its military in the kingdom's oil regions in the east opposite the Persian Gulf.
Patriot PAC-2 and PAC-3 intercept missile batteries were installed around the oil fields and oil terminals; Saudi special forces stationed around the kingdom's main export terminal at Ras Tanura; and special marine and naval forces trained to defend the installations began conducting sea patrols off shore.
Saudi armored forces were furthermore stationed at the main junctions of the pipelines and pumping stations and its air force and navy put on a state of alert.
While the whole world talked about Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to an embargo on its oil exports, the Saudis were far more concerned with the reality of the second half of that threat: They are certain that the menace of an Iranian strike at Saudi oil targets will loom ever larger as US-European sanctions bite deeper into Iran's oil sales and Riyadh steps up its oil production to make up for the Iranian shortfall.

Tehran resorts to smuggling after its oil sales shrink

The Saudis envision a panoply of aggressive Iranian operations: Missiles striking their oil fields and export terminals - aimed from speedboats zooming up close to target and launched from small unpopulated Persian Gulf islands occupied for the purpose by especially trained Iranian units.
Iranian frogmen may come ashore to sabotage oil installations and pipelines; kamikaze pilots crash their planes into the oil tankers; and booby-trapped speedboats piloted by suicide attackers try to ram oil installations or tankers.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources report that Riyadh challenges assessments in the West and Israel that the oil embargo has not yet touched Iran. According to Saudi figures, Tehran is already losing buyers and its regular export volume of around 2.5 million barrels a day has dropped by 15-20 percent.
To make up the difference, says Riyadh, the Iranians have in recent weeks set in motion a major enterprise for smuggling their oil out to market through certain Persian Gulf countries.
They are using large and medium sized oil tankers without flags or identifying markings to drop anchor in Gulf ports, most frequently in Abu Dhabi and Oman. Shrewd traders specializing in the sale of smuggled oil then purchase quantities of crude with cash and transport it to various buyers who don't ask questions about its provenance.
This week, Saudi officials, accompanied by oil, security and intelligence experts, visited Abu Dhabi and Oman and asked the authorities there to put a stop to Iranian oil smuggling. But Riyadh understands that its effort to dry up the Iranian oil smuggling machine may bring Tehran still closer to a decision to go on the offensive against Saudi Arabia.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

The passage through the Strait of Hormuz by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three destroyers – one American, one British and one French, early Monday, Jan. 23 - surprised the world, but not apparently Tehran, which let the warships sail through without interference or incident.
Just two days earlier, Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) deputy commander Hossein Salamimade an uncharacteristically mild comment: “US warships and military forces have been in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East region for many years, and their decision in relation to the dispatch of a new warship is not a new issue, and it should be interpreted as part of their permanent presence,” he said.
These events were the first outward sign of back-channel talks afoot between the emissaries of US PresidentBarack Obama and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Earlier that day, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, posing in the uniform of an aircraft carrier officer, stood in the vast hangar of the giant Enterprise Carrier Strike Group and informed the 1,700 crewmen and women assembled there that their ship would be dispatched to the Strait of Hormuz in March.
Panetta said: “… We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”

The Abraham Lincoln carrier tested Hormuz waters

The White House, which had fully approved Panetta's gesture, decided not to wait until March but to put Salami's words to the test forthwith by sending the Abraham Lincolnthrough the Strait of Hormuz that very night.
But first, President Obama put in urgent calls to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and to British Prime Minister David Cameron, and obtained their approval for British and French warships to enter the strategic strait in convoy with the Lincoln. As an extra precaution against trouble, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report that US Ambassador to Baghdad James Jeffrey contacted Hassan Danaifa, his Iranian opposite number in the Iraqi capital, and let him know that the US-led convoy would be crossing through the Strait of Hormuz shortly.
Ambassador Danaifar promised to pass the message to Tehran. When after a few hours, there was no answer from the Iranian government, Washington decided to take the silence as assent and ordered the Lincoln and escort to begin crossing through the Strait of Hormuz to the Persian Gulf.
The experiment paid off and Washington was encouraged to keep its secret exchanges with Tehran moving forward:
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that those exchanges are advancing on three tracks:

Channels through Baghdad, Ankara, Vienna

1. The Baghdad Track: Ambassadors Jeffrey and Danaifar have taken to meeting in the Green Zone of Baghdad every few days. Their conversations are exploratory, with each side demanding good faith gestures from the other to jump the dialogue forward.
Sources familiar with this track report that Ambassador Jeffrey holds up President Obama's message to Khamenei last month (through Turkish intermediaries, according to some sources; through Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, according to others, including Iranians), which the Iranian leader neglected to answer. The American diplomat insists on the Iranian leader replying to the US president's missive and relating to his proposals before confidence-building gestures are discussed.
Iranian lawmaker Hussein Naqavai claimed this week, “Obama proposed a red telephone between Tehran and Washington. This is an admission that Iran should be consulted on major international issues."
But this is precisely what Washington wishes to avoid: Reciprocal confidence-building gestures are not intended to convey United States recognition of Iran's pretensions as a regional superpower.
And, according to a Western source in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration is also refusing to succumb to Iran's bagaining tactics for selling Persian carpets, i.e. the more a buyer simplifies the transaction to lower the price, the higher the Iranians climb.
2. The Turkish track: Tehran is not happy with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu acting as brokers, in view of their animosity towards Syria's Bashar Assad. However, they are keeping the Turkish track open in consideration of Erdogan's close ties with Obama, while at the same time stirring up trouble between him and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Tehran hopes that the dispute over the latter's persecution of Iraq's Sunni community will raise tensions enough to eventually undermine the Turkish track.

Back channels are not yet generating results

In the latest round of acrimony, Al Maliki accused Ankara of meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs, to which Erdogan retorted Tuesday, Jan. 24: “The idea that Turkey is interfering in your domestic affairs is a very ugly and unfortunate one. Mr. Maliki must know very well that if you initiate a period of clashes in Iraq based on sectarian strife, it is impossible for us to remain silent.”
3. The Viennese track: The miles of corridors at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in the Austrian capital, are an ideal venue for backdoor, off-the-record encounters between American and Iranian diplomats. There, ideas can be freely proposed and unofficial papers traded concerning Iran's disputed nuclear program.
The three tracks have yet to produce results, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington and Iranian sources report.
Just as President Obama was pushing tough sanctions hard, managing this week to get the European Union to approve an oil embargo on Iran and a freeze on its central bank's assets, Washington and Tehran came to a quiet understanding: The new US and EU sanctions would only start taking effect on July 1, leaving six months for negotiations to get underway.
But there is still a way to go before this happens.
And both Washington and Tehran are already girding up for the dialogue to break down even after it starts, according to sources familiar with the calculations on both sides. At that point, the military option will resurface at full blast.
US preparations for a military flare-up are covered in the first article.

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