Source-UK GUARDIAN/IRAN TO ANNOUNCE MAGOR NUCLEAR ACHIEVMENT!
Iran to announce 'major nuclear progress'
Ahmadinejad tells Tehran rally that world will soon hear news of 'very important and very major nuclear achievements'
guardian.co.uk, Sat 11 Feb 2012 12.22 GMT
Iran will soon reveal "very big new achievements" in its controversial nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced.
Speaking at a rally in Tehran to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad also said Iran would never give up its uranium enrichment progamme.
"In the coming days the world will witness Iran's announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements," Ahmadinejad told a crowd at Tehran's Azadi [Freedom] Square broadcast on state television.
Tens of thousands of Iranians joined state-organised rallies across the country to mark the anniversary of the overthrow of Shah, who was largely reviled as a US puppet by his opponents.
The US and its allies suspect Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran insists its programme has only peaceful purposes.
The Islamic republic has said it is forced to manufacture nuclear fuel rods, which provide fuel for reactors, on its own since international sanctions ban it from buying them on foreign markets.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions have risen sharply in recent weeks amid expectations of a military strike by Israel.
Earlier this week, US president Barack Obama ordered the freezing of Iranian government assets, including transactions by the Iranian Central Bank, in tightened sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Socotra, Yemen
Yemen and Militarization of Strategic Waterways
Securing US Control over Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 7, 2010
"Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene." (US Navy Geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayus Mahan (1840-1914))
The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site.
Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (See map below). It is of crucial importance to the US military.
Among Washington's strategic objectives is the militarization of major sea ways. This strategic waterway links the Mediterranean to South Asia and the Far East, through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
It is a major transit route for oil tankers. A large share of China's industrial exports to Western Europe transits through this strategic waterway. Maritime trade from East and Southern Africa to Western Europe also transits within proximity of Socotra (Suqutra), through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. (see map below). A military base in Socotra could be used to oversee the movement of vessels including war ships in an out of the Gulf of Aden.
"The [Indian] Ocean is a major sea lane connecting the Middle East, East Asia and Africa with Europe and the Americas. It has four crucial access waterways facilitating international maritime trade, that is the Suez Canal in Egypt, Bab-el-Mandeb (bordering Djibouti and Yemen), Straits of Hormuz (bordering Iran and Oman), and Straits of Malacca (bordering Indonesia and Malaysia). These ‘chokepoints’ are critical to world oil trade as huge amounts of oil pass through them." (Amjed Jaaved, A new hot-spot of rivalry, Pakistan Observer, July 1, 2009)
Sea Power
From a military standpoint, the Socotra archipelago is at a strategic maritime crossroads. Morever, the archipelago extends over a relatively large maritime area at the Eastern exit of the Gulf of Aden, from the island of Abd al Kuri, to the main island of Socotra. (See map 1 above and 2b below) This maritime area of international transit lies in Yemeni territorial waters. The objective of the US is to police the entire Gulf of Aden seaway from the Yemeni to Somalian coastline. (See map 1).
The Socatra Military Base
On January 2nd, 2010, President Saleh and General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command met for high level discussions behind closed doors.
The Saleh-Petraeus meeting was casually presented by the media as a timely response to the foiled Detroit Christmas bomb attack on Northwest flight 253. It had apparently been scheduled on an ad hoc basis as a means to coordinating counter-terrorism initiatives directed against "Al Qaeda in Yemen", including "the use [of] American drones and missiles on Yemen lands."
Several reports, however, confirmed that the Saleh-Petraeus meetings were intent upon redefining US military involvement in Yemen including the establishment of a full-fledged military base on the island of Socotra. Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh was reported to have "surrendered Socotra for Americans who would set up a military base, pointing out that U.S. officials and the Yemeni government agreed to set up a military base in Socotra to counter pirates and al-Qaeda." (Fars News. January 19, 2010)
On January 1st, one day before the Saleh-Petraeus meetings in Sanaa, General Petraeus confirmed in a Baghdad press conference that "security assistance" to Yemen would more than double from 70 million to more than 150 million dollars, which represents a 14 fold increase since 2006. (Scramble for the Island of Bliss: Socotra!, War in Iraq, January 12, 2010. See also CNN January 9, 2010, The Guardian, December 28, 2009).
This doubling of military aid to Yemen was presented to World public opinion as a response to the Detroit bomb incident, which allegedly had been ordered by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.
The establishment of an air force base on the island of Socotra was described by the US media as part of the "Global war on Terrorism":
"Among the new programs, Saleh and Petraeus agreed to allow the use of American aircraft, perhaps drones, as well as "seaborne missiles"--as long as the operations have prior approval from the Yemenis, according to a senior Yemeni official who requested anonymity when speaking about sensitive subjects. U.S. officials say the island of Socotra, 200 miles off the Yemeni coast, will be beefed up from a small airstrip [under the jurisdiction of the Yemeni military] to a full base in order to support the larger aid program as well as battle Somali pirates. Petraeus is also trying to provide the Yemeni forces with basic equipment such as up-armored Humvees and possibly more helicopters." (Newsweek, Newsweek, January 18, 2010, emphasis added)
U.S. Air Force B1B Lancer
US Naval Facility?
The proposed US Socotra military facility, however, is not limited to an air force base. A US naval base has also been contemplated.
The development of Socotra's naval infrastructure was already in the pipeline. Barely a few days prior (December 29, 2009) to the Petraeus-Saleh discussions (January 2, 2010), the Yemeni cabinet approved a US$14 million loan by Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) in support of the development of Socotra's seaport project.
The Great Game
The Socotra archipelago is part of the Great Game opposing Russia and America.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a military presence in Socotra, which at the time was part of South Yemen.
Barely a year ago, the Russians entered into renewed discussions with the Yemeni government regarding the establishment of a Naval base on Socotra island. A year later, in January 2010, in the week following the Petraeus-Saleh meeting, a Russian Navy communiqué "confirmed that Russia did not give up its plans to have bases for its ships... on Socotra island." (DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia), January 25, 2010)
The Petraeus-Saleh January 2, 2010 discussions were crucial in weakening Russian diplomatic overtures to the Yemeni government.
The US military has had its eye on the island of Socotra since the end of the Cold War.
In 1999, Socotra was chosen "as a site upon which the United States planned to build a signal intelligence system...." Yemeni opposition news media reported that "Yemen's administration had agreed to allow the U.S. military access to both a port and an airport on Socotra." According to the opposition daily Al-Haq, "a new civilian airport built on Socotra to promote tourism had conveniently been constructed in accordance with U.S. military specifications." (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), October 18, 2000)
The Militarization of the Indian Ocean
The establishment of a US military base in Socotra is part of the broader process of militarization of the Indian Ocean. The latter consists in integrating and linking Socotra into an existing structure as well as reinforcing the key role played by the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos archipelago.
The US Navy's geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan had intimated, prior to First World War, that "whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean [will] be a prominent player on the international scene.".(Indian Ocean and our Security).
What was at stake in Rear Admiral Mahan's writings was the strategic control by the US of major Ocean sea ways and of the Indian Ocean in particular: "This ocean is the key to the seven seas in the twenty-first century; the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters."
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, which hosts the award winning website: www.globalresearch.ca . He is the author of the international best-seller "The Globalisation of Poverty and The New World Order". He is contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.
Related Global Research Article: See Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean, Global Research, 8 January 2010.
Source-Source-Global research.ca
Masirah, Oman
Masirah Oman Runway
Source-Global security.org
Oman Facilities
The United States has maintained relations with the Sultanate since the early years of American independence. A treaty of friendship and navigation, one of the first agreements of its kind with an Arab state, was concluded between the United States and Muscat in 1833. This treaty was replaced by the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights signed at Salalah on December 20, 1958.
A U.S. consulate was maintained in Muscat from 1880 until 1915. Thereafter, U.S. interests in Oman were handled by U.S. diplomats resident in other countries. In 1972, the U.S. ambassador in Kuwait was accredited also as the first U.S. ambassador to Oman, and the U.S. embassy, headed by a resident charge d'affaires, was opened. The first resident U.S. ambassador took up his post in July 1974. The Oman embassy was opened in Washington, DC, in 1973.
U.S.-Omani relations were deepened in 1980 by the conclusion of two important agreements. One provided access to Omani military facilities by U.S. forces under agreed-upon conditions. The other agreement established a Joint Commission for Economic and Technical Cooperation, located in Muscat, to provide U.S. economic assistance to Oman. The Joint Commission continued in existence until the mid-1990s. A Peace Corps program, which assisted Oman mainly in the fields of health and education, was initiated in 1973 and phased out in 1983. A team from the Federal Aviation Administration worked with Oman's Civil Aviation Department on a reimbursable basis but was phased out in 1992.
In 1974 and April 1983, Sultan Qaboos made state visits to the United States. Vice President Bush visited Oman in 1984 and 1986, and President Clinton visited briefly in March 2000.
Oman, perhaps the strongest supporter of the US presence in the Gulf, signed an access agreement with the United States in 1981, an unpopular time to do so. It hosts three Air Force pre-positioning sites with support equipment for 26,000 personnel as well as required equipment and fuel to maintain three air bases.
USAF Prepositioned War Reserve Materiel (WRM) provides support to bare base systems, medical, munitions, fuels mobility support equipment, vehicles, rations, aerospace ground equipment, air base operability equipment, and associated spares and other consumables at designated locations. Responsible for asset receipt, accountability, serviceability, storage, security, periodic inspection and test, maintenance, repair, outload, and reconstitution of prepositioned WRM. Current WRM operating locations include Seeb, Thumrait, Masirah, Oman; Al Udeid, Qatar; and Manama, Bahrain.
Services under the War Reserve Materiel (WRM) contract are performed by DynCorp Technical Services at Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) bases at Masirah, Thumrait, and Seeb; Al Udeid, Qatar; Manama, Bahrain; and Shaw AFB, SC. DynCorp provides support to bare base systems, medical, munitions, fuels mobility support equipment, vehicles, rations, aerospace ground equipment, air base operability equipment, and associated spares and other consumables at designated locations. Responsible for asset receipt, accountability, serviceability, storage, security, periodic inspection and test, maintenance, repair, outload, and reconstitution of prepositioned WRM. This is a one year contract with an option to renew the contract. Total length of contract is seven years.
Services include maintaining war reserve materiel (WRM) stored in the Sultanate of Oman, State of Bahrain, and State of Qatar. In Oman, contract performance is on Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) government installations, and all access to the installations is controlled by the RAFO Security. In Bahrain, performance is in an area controlled by US Navy and Bahrain Port Authority. In Qatar, the Host Nation controls access to the work site.
War reserve materiel includes medical and munitions, warehousing of rations, and various other supplies. The contractor shall be responsible for performing all or any specifically designated portions of the functions accomplished under this contract during any wartime operations. Wartime operations are those actions, including contingency planning, which would be required to support current or any future United States Air Force wartime requirement. Emergency situations (i.e., accident and rescue operations, civil disturbances, natural disasters and military peacetime contingency operations and exercises) may necessitate the Contractor provide increased or reduced support as indicated below when required by Contracting Officer. Military contingency operations may necessitate military personnel assistance be provided to the Contractor. Should this occur, the Contractor will be relieved of responsibilities and accountability for the phase of the contract taken over by the military. Optional WRM sites may be exercised at any time during the performance of this contract. In the event the Government adds a new site to the contract, both parties to this contract hereby agree to negotiate in good faith the applicable price necessary to account for the change.
Since 1981 there has been an ongoing program to harden and upgrade Oman's key airfields, including the construction of hardened aircraft shelters (HAS), the lengthening and strengthening of runways, and development of extensive support facilities, ordnance depots and fuel dumps. The northern bases -- Seeb, Masirah and Khasab -- have been the primary focus of these projects. Seeb is the main transport and logistic base, collocated with the international airport, while Masirah supports air defence and strike/interdiction. Both host airborne surveillance over land and ocean approaches.
AH-64 Apache Longbows
April 24th -25th 1980 United States Military Failed Rescue attempt of Hostages in Iran.
Source-FreeRepublic
Desert One
The mission was to rescue the hostages held in Iran, but it ended in disaster.
Iranian soldiers survey the wreckage of the aborted US military attempt to rescue hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran. Eight American servicemen died in a disastrous accident as the rescue forces pulled back from the mission.
By Otto Kreisher
For some, the current political debate over the combat readiness of today's American military stirs memories of a long-ago event that, more than anything else, came to symbolize the disastrously "hollow" forces of the post-Vietnam era.
It began in the evening of April 24, 1980, when a supposedly elite US military force launched a bold but doomed attempt to rescue their fellow American citizens and their nation's honor from captivity in Tehran. In the early hours of April 25, the effort ended in fiery disaster at a remote spot in Iran known ever after as Desert One.
This failed attempt to rescue 53 hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran resulted in the death of five US Air Force men and three Marines, serious injuries to five other troops, and the loss of eight aircraft. That failure would haunt the US military for years and would torment some of the key participants for the rest of their lives.
One, Air Force Col. James Kyle, called it, "The most colossal episode of hope, despair, and tragedy I had experienced in nearly three decades of military service."
The countdown to this tragedy opened exactly 20 years ago, in January 1979. A popular uprising in Iran forced the
sudden abdication and flight into exile of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the longtime ruler of Iran and staunch
US ally. Brought to power in the wake of this event was a government led, in name, by Shahpur Bakhtiar and
Abolhassan Bani Sadr. Within months, they, too, had been shoved aside, replaced by fundamentalist Shiite Muslim
clerics led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
This secretly taken photo shows how Iranian troops blanketed the streets, making it difficult for the US to obtain intelligence. The CIA's spy network had been dismantled, one of many problems facing the rescue planners.
On Nov. 4, two weeks after President Jimmy Carter had allowed the shah to enter the US for medical care, 3,000 Iranian "student" radicals invaded the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. Chief of Mission L. Bruce Laingen and two aides were held separately at the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
The students demanded that the shah be returned for trial. Khomeini's supporters blocked all efforts to free the hostages.
Thirteen black and female hostages would be released later as a "humanitarian" gesture, but the humiliating captivity for the others would drag on for 14 months.
Rice Bowl
Carter, facing a re-election battle in 1980, strongly favored a diplomatic solution, but his national security advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, directed the Pentagon to begin planning for a rescue mission or retaliatory strikes in case the hostages were harmed. In response, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. David C. Jones, established a small, secretive planning group, dubbed "Rice Bowl," to study American options for a rescue effort.
It quickly became clear how difficult that would be.
The first obstacle was the location. Tehran was isolated, surrounded by more than 700 miles of desert and mountains in any direction. This cut the city off from ready attack by US air or naval forces. Moreover, the embassy was in the heart of the city congested by more than four million people.
A bigger hurdle, however, was the condition of the US military, which had plummeted in size and quality in the seven years since it had staged a near-total withdrawal from Vietnam. Among the casualties of the postVietnam cutbacks was the once-powerful array of Army and Air Force special operations forces that had performed feats of great bravery and military skill in Southeast Asia.
The one exception was an elite unit of soldiers recently formed to counter the danger of international terror. This unit, called Delta Force, was commanded by Army Col. Charles Beckwith, a combat-tested special forces officer. Delta, which had just been certified as operational after conducting a hostage rescue exercise, was directed to start planning for the real thing at the Tehran embassy.
The immediate question was how to get Delta close enough to do its job. Directing the planners who were trying to solve that riddle was Army Maj. Gen. James Vaught, a veteran of three wars, with Ranger and airborne experience but no exposure to special operations or multiservice missions. Because of the need for extreme secrecy, he was denied the use of an existing JCS or service organization. Vaught had to assemble his planning team and the joint task force that would conduct the mission from widely scattered sources.
One of the early selections was Kyle, a highly regarded veteran of air commando operations in Vietnam, who would help plan the air mission and would be on-scene commander at Desert One.
When Beckwith ruled out a parachute drop, helicopters became the best option for reaching Tehran, despite the doubts Beckwith and other Vietnam veterans had about their reliability. Navy RH-53D Sea Stallions, which were used as airborne minesweepers, were chosen because of their superior range and load-carrying capability and their ability to operate from an aircraft carrier.
Even the Navy Sea Stallions could not fly from the Indian Ocean to Tehran without refueling. After testing and rejecting alternatives, the task force opted to use Air Force EC-130 Hercules transports rigged with temporary 18,000-gallon fuel bladders to refuel the helicopters on their way to Tehran.
Finding the Spot
However, that decision led to the requirement of finding a spot in the Iranian desert where the refueling could take place on the ground. That required terrain that would support the weight of the gas-bloated Hercules.
US intelligence found and explored just such a location, about 200 miles southeast of Tehran. In planning and training, this site was known as Desert One.
Because the RH-53s were Navy aircraft, the Pentagon assigned Navy pilots to fly them and added Marine copilots to provide experience with land assault missions.
That combination soon proved unworkable, as many of the Navy's pilots were unable or unwilling to master the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of long-range, low-level flying over land, at night, using primitive night vision goggles.
In December, most of the Navy pilots were replaced by Marines carefully selected for their experience in night and low-level flying. The mission ultimately had 16 pilots: 12 Marine, three Navy, and one Air Force.
Selected to lead the helicopter element was Marine Lt. Col. Edward Seiffert, a veteran H-53 pilot who had flown long-range search-and-rescue missions in Vietnam and had considerable experience flying with night vision goggles.
Beckwith described Seiffert as "a no-nonsense, humorless--some felt rigid--officer who wanted to get on with the job."
Delta and the helicopter crews never developed the coordination and trust that are essential to high-stress, complex combat missions. Possibly, this was caused by the disjointed nature of the task force and its training.
While the helicopter crews worked out of Yuma, Ariz., the members of Delta Force did most of their training in the woods of North Carolina. Other Army personnel were drilling in Europe. The Air Force crews that would take part in the mission trained in Florida or Guam, thousands of miles away in the Pacific.
The entire operation was being directed by a loosely assembled staff in Washington, D.C., which insisted that all the elements had to be further isolated by a tightly controlled flow of information that would protect operational
security.
"Ours was a tenuous amalgamation of forces held together by an intense common desire to succeed, but we were slow coming together as a team," Kyle wrote in his account of the mission.
Meanwhile, Beckwith and his staff were desperate for detailed information on the physical layout of the embassy, the numbers and locations of the Iranian guards, and, most important, the location of the hostages.
C-130s were to fly the rescue force from Masirah to Desert One. Helicopters, flown from Nimitz, would carry the rescuers to a hideout near Tehran. The next night, the commandos were to drive to the embassy to release the hostages. The helicopters then were to carry the rescuers and hostages to the abandoned Manzariyeh air base, where C-141s would fly them to Egypt.
Six Buildings
Without that data, Delta had to plan to search up to six buildings in the embassy compound where the hostages might be held. That required Beckwith to increase the size of his assault force, which meant more helicopters were needed.
No intelligence was coming out of Iran because Carter had dismantled the CIA's network of spies due to the agency's role in overthrowing governments in Vietnam and Latin America.
It would be months before agents could be inserted into Iran to supply the detailed intelligence Beckwith said was "the difference between failure and success, between humiliation and pride, between losing lives and saving them."
Despite all the obstacles, the task force by mid-March 1980 had developed what they considered a workable plan, and all of the diverse operational elements had become confident of their ability to carry it out.
The plan was staggering in its scope and complexity, bringing together scores of aircraft and thousands of men from all four services and from units scattered from Arizona to Okinawa, Japan.
The plan was this:
On the first night, six Air Force C-130s carrying 132 Delta commandos, Army Rangers, and support personnel and the helicopter fuel would fly from the island of Masirah, off the coast of Oman, more than 1,000 miles to Desert One, being refueled in flight from Air Force KC-135 tankers.
Eight Navy RH-53Ds would lift off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, about 50 miles south of the Iranian coast, and fly more than 600 miles to Desert One.
After refueling, the helicopters would carry the rescue force to a hideout in hills about 50 miles southeast of Tehran, then fly to a separate hiding spot nearby. The C-130s would return to Masirah, being refueled in flight again.
The next night, Delta would be driven to the embassy in vehicles obtained by the agents. A team of Rangers would go to rescue the three Americans held in the foreign ministry.
As the ground units were freeing the hostages, the helicopters would fly from their hiding spot to the embassy and the foreign ministry.
Three Air Force AC-130 gunships would arrive overhead to protect the rescue force from any Iranian counterattack and to destroy the jet fighters at the Tehran airport. The choppers would fly the rescue force and the freed hostages to an abandoned air base at Manzariyeh, about 50 miles southwest of Tehran, which was to be seized and protected by a Ranger company flown in on C-130s.
The helicopters would be destroyed and C-141s, flown in from Saudi Arabia, would then fly the entire group to a base in Egypt.
"Now a Reality"
After five months of planning, organizing, training, and a series of increasingly complex rehearsals, Kyle recalled: "The ability to rescue our people being held hostage, which didn't exist on Nov. 4, 1979, was now a reality." The team still needed Carter's permission to execute.
Although the shah had moved to Panama and then to Egypt, the 53 Americans remained hostages and the public was getting impatient. Finally, in a White House meeting of his top advisors on April 11, Carter gave up on diplomacy. "I told everyone that it was time for us to bring our hostages home; their safety and our national honor were at stake," Carter said in his memoirs.
Five days later, Jones, Vaught, and Beckwith briefed Carter at the White House on the plans for the rescue mission and expressed their confidence in their ability to pull it off.
Beckwith recalled that Carter told them: "I do not want to undertake this operation, but we have no other recourse. ... We're going to do this operation."
Carter then told Jones, "This is a military operation; you will run it. ... I don't want anyone else in this room involved."
The audacious operation was code-named "Eagle Claw." The target date was April 24-25.
Almost immediately, forces began to move to their jump-off points. By April 24, 44 aircraft were poised at six widely separated locations to perform or support the rescue mission. The RH-53s already were on Nimitz, where they had been stored with minimal care for months, but a frantic effort brought them up to what Seiffert and Navy officials insisted was top mechanical condition by launch day.
Beckwith and Seiffert had agreed that they would need a minimum of six flyable helicopters at Desert One for the mission to continue. Beckwith had asked for 10 helos on the carrier to cover for possible malfunctions, but the Navy claimed they could not store more than eight on the hangar deck.
Delta and many of the Air Force aircraft staged briefly at a Russian-built airfield at Wadi Qena, Egypt, which would serve as Vaught's headquarters for the mission. While at Wadi Qena on April 23, the task force received an intelligence report that all 53 hostages were being held in the embassy's chancery. Because he was not told the solid source of that information, Beckwith did not trust it enough to reduce his assault force, which may have been a critical decision.
The next day, with Delta Force and support elements on Masirah and the helicopter crews on Nimitz, Vaught received the final weather report. It promised the virtually clear weather that the mission required.
"Execute Mission"
Vaught sent a message to all units: "Execute mission as planned. God speed."
"There was cheering, and fists were jammed into the air with thumbs up. ... This was an emotional high for all of us," Kyle wrote.
That emotional high would crash into despair in about 12 hours.
The mission started in the twilight of April 24 with barely a hitch. Kyle and Beckwith flew out of Masirah on the lead MC-130 Combat Talon with some of the Delta troopers and an Air Force combat controller team. At about the same time, Seiffert led the helicopter force--given the call sign of "Bluebird"--from Nimitz and headed to the Iranian coast, 60 miles away.
The choppers had been fitted with two advanced navigation systems, but the pilots found them unreliable and were relying mainly on visual navigation as they cruised along at 200 feet. "We were fat, dumb, and happy," Seiffert recalled.
About 100 miles into Iran, the Talon ran into a thin cloud that reduced visibility but was not a problem at its cruise altitude of 2,000 feet. The cloud was a mass of suspended dust, called a "haboob," common to the Iranian desert. Air Force weather experts supporting the mission knew it was a possibility but apparently never told the mission pilots. Kyle said he considered sending a warning to the helicopters but decided it was not significant.
When the MC-130 ran into a much thicker cloud later, he did try to alert Seiffert, but the message never got through. It was just one of the communications glitches that would plague the mission.
The dust cloud that was a minor irritation to the Combat Talon became an extended torture for the helicopter pilots, who were trying to fly formation and visually navigate at 200 feet while wearing the crude night vision goggles. Visibly shaken Marine fliers later told Beckwith and Kyle the hours in the milk-like dust cloud were the worst experience of their lives, which for some included combat in Vietnam.
Things had started to go wrong even before the dust cloud.
Less than two hours into the flight, a warning light came on in the cockpit of Bluebird Six. The indicator, called the Blade Inspection Method, or BIM, warned of a possible leak of the pressurized nitrogen that filled the Sea Stallion's hollow rotors. In the H-53 models the Marines were used to flying, the BIM indicator usually meant a crack in one of the massive blades, which had caused rotor failures and several fatal crashes in the past. As a result, Marine H-53 pilots were trained to land quickly after a BIM warning.
The Navy's RH-53s, however, had newer BIM systems that usually did not foretell a blade failure. To that date, no RH-53 had experienced a blade break and the manufacturer had determined that the helicopter could fly safely for up to 79 hours at reduced speed after a BIM alert.
Down to Seven
However, the pilots of Bluebird Six did not know that. Thinking the craft unsafe to fly, the crew abandoned it in the desert and jumped aboard a helicopter that had landed to help.
The mission was down to seven helicopters.
Further inland, the remaining choppers were struggling with the dust cloud, which dropped visibility to yards and sent the cockpit temperature soaring. Although all the pilots were having difficulty, Bluebird Five was really suffering as progressive electrical system failures took away most of the pilot's essential flight and navigation instruments. The pilot, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rodney Davis, "was flying partial panel, needle-ball, wet compass--a real vertigo inducer," Seiffert said.
Fighting against the unnerving effects of vertigo-when your inner ear tells you the aircraft is turning while your eyes tell you it is not-and unaware of the location of the other helicopters or the weather at Desert One, Davis decided to turn back.
Davis did not know that he was about 25 minutes from clear air, which prevailed all the way to Desert One, because everyone was maintaining strict radio silence to avoid detection.
The mission now was down to the minimum six helicopters.
Meanwhile, the lead C-130 had landed at Desert One, and Beckwith's commandos had raced out to block the dirt road that traversed the site.
Within minutes, they stopped a bus with 44 persons at one end of the site and at the opposite end had to fire an anti-tank round into a gas tanker truck that refused to stop. The driver of the tanker leaped from his burning vehicle and escaped in a pickup that was following. Despite fears the mission might be compromised, the combat controllers quickly installed a portable navigation system and runway lights to guide the other mission aircraft to Desert One.
Soon, the remainder of Delta Force was on the ground and the three EC-130s were positioned to refuel the helicopters, which were supposed to arrive 20 minutes later.
But, as Kyle discovered months later, someone had miscalculated the choppers' flight time by 55 minutes and the first Bluebird was more than an hour away. Finally, the Sea Stallions lumbered in from the dark, coming in ones and twos, instead of a formation, and from different directions.
After considerable anxiety, the count was up to six helicopters on the ground at Desert One and the hopes for a successful rescue soared again.
But as the helicopters struggled through unexpected deep sand to get into position behind the tankers, one shut down its engines.
Bluebird Two had suffered a complete failure of its secondary hydraulic system, which was unrepairable and left it with minimal pressure for its flight controls. Although the pilot appeared willing to try taking his sick bird on to the hideout, Seiffert overruled him.
Kyle tried to talk Seiffert into taking the helo on, but he refused, warning that flying with the one system at such heavy weight and high temperature could result in a control lockup and a crash that would kill not only the crew but the Delta commandos on board. Kyle then asked Beckwith if he could reduce his assault force to go with five choppers, but he was equally adamant about not changing his plans.
Failure of Eagle Claw
It seemed clear the mission had to be aborted.
Kyle informed Vaught of the situation by satellite radio and the task force commander relayed that to Jones and the Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, at the Pentagon. When the word got to the White House, Carter asked Brown to get Beckwith's opinion. Told that Beckwith felt it necessary to abort, Carter said: "Let's go with his recommendation."
Eagle Claw had failed and the tense anticipation of success drained into frustration and anger.
Now Kyle was left with the unrehearsed job of getting everyone out of Iran. Because of the extended time on the ground, one of the C-130s was running low on fuel and had to leave soon. To allow that tanker to move, Kyle directed Marine Maj. James Schaefer to reposition his helicopter. With a flattened nose wheel, Schaefer could not taxi and tried to lift off to move his bird, stirring a blinding dust cloud.
As Kyle watched in horror, the helo slid sideways, slicing into the C-130 with its spinning rotors and igniting a raging fire. Red-hot chunks of metal flamed across the sky as munitions in both aircraft torched off.
Some of the Delta commandos had boarded the C-130 and they came tumbling out the side door as the Air Force loadmasters and senior soldiers tried to stop a spreading panic. Men were helping the injured away from the inferno.
The projectiles ejecting from the flaming wreckage were hitting the three nearby helicopters and their crews quickly fled.
Many of the people at Desert One that night credit Kyle with restoring order to the chaotic scene and getting all the living men and salvageable equipment out safely. But in the flaming funeral pyre of Eagle Claw's shattered hopes, they left the bodies of eight brave men.
On the departing C-130s, Delta medics treated four badly burned men, including Schaefer, his copilot, and two airmen. "We left a lot of hopes and dreams back there at Desert One, but the nightmares and despair were coming with us ... and would continue to haunt us for years, maybe forever," Kyle wrote later.
The hostages were released in January 1981 after the US and Iran reached an accord involving release of frozen Iranian assets. Lt. Col David Roeder, left, and Col. Thomas E. Schaefer were two of the USAF servicemen who were among those freed.
Holloway's Investigation
Although Carter went on television the next day to announce the failure of the mission and to accept the blame, Congress and the Pentagon launched inquiries to determine the reasons for the tragedy. The Pentagon probe was handled by a board of three retired and three serving flag officers representing all four services; it was led by retired Adm. James L. Holloway III. The commission's report listed 23 areas "that troubled us professionally about the mission-areas in which there appeared to be weaknesses."
"We are apprehensive that the critical tone of our discussion could be misinterpreted as an indictment of the able and brave men who planned and executed this operation. We encountered not a shred of evidence of culpable neglect or incompetence," the report said.
The commission concluded that the concept and plan for the mission were feasible and had a reasonable chance for success.
But, it noted, "the rescue mission was a high-risk operation. ... People and equipment were called upon to perform at the upper limits of human capacity and equipment capability. There was little margin to compensate for mistakes or plain bad luck."
The major criticism was of the "ad hoc" nature of the task force, a chain of command the commission felt was unclear, and an emphasis on operational secrecy it found excessive.
The commission also said the chances for success would have been improved if more backup helicopters had been provided, if a rehearsal of all mission components had been held, and if the helicopter pilots had had better access to weather information and the data on the RH-53s' BIM warning system.
And it suggested that Air Force helicopter pilots might have been better qualified for the mission.
However, the report also said, "The helicopter crews demonstrated a strong dedication toward mission accomplishment by their reluctance to abort under unusually difficult conditions." And it concluded that, "two factors combined to directly cause the mission abort: an unexpected helicopter failure rate and the low-visibility flight conditions en route to Desert One."
Beckwith openly blamed the helicopter pilots immediately after the mission. However, in his critique to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he attributed the failure to Murphy's Law and the use of an ad hoc organization for such a difficult mission. "We went out and found bits and pieces, people and equipment, brought them together occasionally, and then asked them to perform a highly complex mission," he said. "The parts all performed, but they didn't necessarily perform as a team."
He recommended creating an organization that, in essence, was the prototype of the Special Operations Command that Congress mandated in 1986.
Kyle, in his book on the mission, rejected the Holloway commission's conclusions and basically blamed Seiffert and the helicopter pilots for not climbing out of the dust cloud, for not using their radios to keep the formation intact, and for the three helicopter aborts.
He argued that the task force never had less than seven flyable helicopters. All that was lacking, he wrote, was "the guts to try."
Seiffert praised Beckwith and Kyle as professional warriors but disagreed with their criticism of him and his helicopter pilots. He equated his decision to ground the chopper with the failed hydraulic system to Beckwith's refusal to cut his assault force, and he refused to second-guess the two pilots who had aborted earlier.
Seiffert said he was confident that, had they gotten to Tehran, the mission would have succeeded. Kyle was equally certain, writing that: "It is my considered opinion that we came within a gnat's eyebrow of success."
Beckwith wrote in his memoirs that he had recurring nightmares after Desert One. However, he noted, "In none have I ever dreamed whether the mission would have been successful or not."
Otto Kreisher is the national security reporter for Copley News Service, based in Washington, D.C. His most recent article for Air Force Magazine, "To Protect the Force," appeared in the November 1998 issue.
This is an Air Force AC-130, a flying cannon. It has high speed machine guns and automatic cannons, and can fill a football field with a bullet in every square inch in a matter of seconds. These were the Air Force's protection they provided. They would also have been used to keep any Iranian aircraft from taking off from any airfield in the area, and also to keep the streets clear of any Iranians from around the embassy.
The RH-53 was a fine aircraft. Why everything went wrong is what we will ask ourselves for ever. It just seems that God did not want us to win that day, we did not have his favor.
Source-FreeRepublic/U.S. Hostages
Israel's War Against Iran
Oil Market, Exposure to the Middle-East & the Saudi Arabia-Iran-U.S. Axis.
Posted on January 27, 2012 by fmpdea
Given the ongoing straight of Hormuz crisis I thought it might be interesting gathering some information. The interest arises from the potential human and economic losses associated with any further escalation. Here I’ll focus on the economic aspect in the hope that the human toll will not actually happen. The issue is of course that an increase in oil prices is a well known economic shock, best understood as a contraction in aggregate supply that increases inflation and contracts output (GDP). This is not an abstraction, even for the EU, who has more or less cut all ties with Iran, given the transmission of transport costs to the consumer prices, in the event of an actual closing of the straight of Hormuz.
In my opinion any diplomatic solution is only reachable via an economic-military trade-off where the USA (1) withdraws the sanctions, (2) starts pushing for Saudi openness to Iranian investments and (3) promises to not intervene in Syria at the bequest of the Arab league (but maintains a military presence in the Persian gulf) in exchange for an end to the Iranian Nuclear programme.
Oil Exposure
Reuters has an interesting map of Middle East Oil Traffic Choke points, highlighting some of the most important strategic points for the Oil market in the Middle East.
It should make clear the strategic importance of countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Eritrea and Somalia. If it isn’t then the map below of US military bases in the region (or this one) should help. The overlap is blatant.
The Iranian Perspective-Apparently Iran wants 3 things...
”It wants the United States to reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf dramatically (which as shown before is quite intense). Having seen two U.S. interventions against Iraq and one against Afghanistan, Iran is aware of U.S. power and the way American political sentiment can shift. It experienced the shift from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, so it knows how fast things can change. Tehran sees the United States in the Persian Gulf coupled with U.S. and Israeli covert operations and destabilization campaigns as an unpredictable danger to Iranian national security.”
“The Iranians want to be recognized as the leading power in the region. This does not mean they intend to occupy any nation directly. It does mean that Iran doesn’t want Saudi Arabia, for example, to pose a military threat against it.” This is relevant in light of the Syrian conflict, the brutality of which creastes an evironment where “for the first time, there is the potential for a militarily viable target set for outside players acting on behalf of the rebels. The existence of that possibility might change the dynamic in Syria. When we take into account the atmospherics of the Arab League demands for a provisional government, some meaningful pressure might actually emerge. (…) This raises the risk that the sphere of influence Tehran is pursuing will be blocked by the fall of the al Assad regime. This would not pose a fundamental challenge to Iran, so long as its influence in Iraq remains intact, but it (…) could open the door to recalculations in Tehran as to the limits of Iranian influence and the threat to their national security.(….) Iran has long felt that its natural role as leader in the Persian Gulf has been thwarted, first by the Ottomans, then the British and now by the Americans, and they have wanted to create what they regard as the natural state of things.”.
“Iran wants a restructuring of oil revenue in the region. How this is formally achieved — whether by allowing Iranian investment in Arabian oil companies (possibly financed by the host country) or some other means — is unimportant. What does matter is that the Iranians want a bigger share of the region’s vast financial resources.”
The USA Perspective: With the Pyrrhic victories in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, the USA is no longer the uncontested super power. According to that analyst,
“The United States and its allies do not want Iran to get nuclear weapons. But more than that, they do not want to see Iran as the dominant conventional force in the area able to use its influence to undermine the Saudis”. This is problematic in terms of the regional influence that Iran gained in the aftermath of the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
“The United States doesn’t want a conflict with Iran. Iran doesn’t want one with the United States. Neither can be sure how such a conflict would play out. The Iranians want to sell oil. The Americans want the West to be able to buy oil. The issue really comes down to whether the United States wants to guarantee the flow of oil militarily or via a political accommodation”
If so, it is possible to see the USA as happy to lower sanction on Iran if the latter drops its nuclear programme. But it is unlikely that they try to accommodate them in exchange of vague and ambiguous commitments.
The Saudi Angle: This is where the analyst from Stratfor looses me. An hypothesis is made that the USA might choose to drop the Saudis and replace them by the Iranians. This makes no sense to me. The Saudis are reliable partners, where the USA has physically settled its military. It is accommodating and richer in oil. The Iranians are not. For the USA to pursue such a policy would not be out of preference for dealing with Iran but rather due to lack of choice caused by financial hardship. In that case there won’t be a trade off between Iranian and Arabic support but rather a complete withdrawal from the region by the USA. Let’s hope that by then the world has developped an efficient way to exploit solar energy…
Source- PlacedLuxembourg.com/Continued Here
Iran to announce 'major nuclear progress'
Ahmadinejad tells Tehran rally that world will soon hear news of 'very important and very major nuclear achievements'
guardian.co.uk, Sat 11 Feb 2012 12.22 GMT
Iran will soon reveal "very big new achievements" in its controversial nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced.
Speaking at a rally in Tehran to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad also said Iran would never give up its uranium enrichment progamme.
"In the coming days the world will witness Iran's announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements," Ahmadinejad told a crowd at Tehran's Azadi [Freedom] Square broadcast on state television.
Tens of thousands of Iranians joined state-organised rallies across the country to mark the anniversary of the overthrow of Shah, who was largely reviled as a US puppet by his opponents.
The US and its allies suspect Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran insists its programme has only peaceful purposes.
The Islamic republic has said it is forced to manufacture nuclear fuel rods, which provide fuel for reactors, on its own since international sanctions ban it from buying them on foreign markets.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions have risen sharply in recent weeks amid expectations of a military strike by Israel.
Earlier this week, US president Barack Obama ordered the freezing of Iranian government assets, including transactions by the Iranian Central Bank, in tightened sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Socotra, Yemen
C-5 Galaxy Transport(Tanks,Helicopters,Artillery,etc)
Yemen and Militarization of Strategic Waterways
Securing US Control over Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 7, 2010
"Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene." (US Navy Geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayus Mahan (1840-1914))
The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site.
Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (See map below). It is of crucial importance to the US military.
Among Washington's strategic objectives is the militarization of major sea ways. This strategic waterway links the Mediterranean to South Asia and the Far East, through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
It is a major transit route for oil tankers. A large share of China's industrial exports to Western Europe transits through this strategic waterway. Maritime trade from East and Southern Africa to Western Europe also transits within proximity of Socotra (Suqutra), through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. (see map below). A military base in Socotra could be used to oversee the movement of vessels including war ships in an out of the Gulf of Aden.
"The [Indian] Ocean is a major sea lane connecting the Middle East, East Asia and Africa with Europe and the Americas. It has four crucial access waterways facilitating international maritime trade, that is the Suez Canal in Egypt, Bab-el-Mandeb (bordering Djibouti and Yemen), Straits of Hormuz (bordering Iran and Oman), and Straits of Malacca (bordering Indonesia and Malaysia). These ‘chokepoints’ are critical to world oil trade as huge amounts of oil pass through them." (Amjed Jaaved, A new hot-spot of rivalry, Pakistan Observer, July 1, 2009)
Sea Power
From a military standpoint, the Socotra archipelago is at a strategic maritime crossroads. Morever, the archipelago extends over a relatively large maritime area at the Eastern exit of the Gulf of Aden, from the island of Abd al Kuri, to the main island of Socotra. (See map 1 above and 2b below) This maritime area of international transit lies in Yemeni territorial waters. The objective of the US is to police the entire Gulf of Aden seaway from the Yemeni to Somalian coastline. (See map 1).
The Socatra Military Base
On January 2nd, 2010, President Saleh and General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command met for high level discussions behind closed doors.
The Saleh-Petraeus meeting was casually presented by the media as a timely response to the foiled Detroit Christmas bomb attack on Northwest flight 253. It had apparently been scheduled on an ad hoc basis as a means to coordinating counter-terrorism initiatives directed against "Al Qaeda in Yemen", including "the use [of] American drones and missiles on Yemen lands."
Several reports, however, confirmed that the Saleh-Petraeus meetings were intent upon redefining US military involvement in Yemen including the establishment of a full-fledged military base on the island of Socotra. Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh was reported to have "surrendered Socotra for Americans who would set up a military base, pointing out that U.S. officials and the Yemeni government agreed to set up a military base in Socotra to counter pirates and al-Qaeda." (Fars News. January 19, 2010)
On January 1st, one day before the Saleh-Petraeus meetings in Sanaa, General Petraeus confirmed in a Baghdad press conference that "security assistance" to Yemen would more than double from 70 million to more than 150 million dollars, which represents a 14 fold increase since 2006. (Scramble for the Island of Bliss: Socotra!, War in Iraq, January 12, 2010. See also CNN January 9, 2010, The Guardian, December 28, 2009).
This doubling of military aid to Yemen was presented to World public opinion as a response to the Detroit bomb incident, which allegedly had been ordered by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.
The establishment of an air force base on the island of Socotra was described by the US media as part of the "Global war on Terrorism":
"Among the new programs, Saleh and Petraeus agreed to allow the use of American aircraft, perhaps drones, as well as "seaborne missiles"--as long as the operations have prior approval from the Yemenis, according to a senior Yemeni official who requested anonymity when speaking about sensitive subjects. U.S. officials say the island of Socotra, 200 miles off the Yemeni coast, will be beefed up from a small airstrip [under the jurisdiction of the Yemeni military] to a full base in order to support the larger aid program as well as battle Somali pirates. Petraeus is also trying to provide the Yemeni forces with basic equipment such as up-armored Humvees and possibly more helicopters." (Newsweek, Newsweek, January 18, 2010, emphasis added)
U.S. Air Force B1B Lancer
US Naval Facility?
The proposed US Socotra military facility, however, is not limited to an air force base. A US naval base has also been contemplated.
The development of Socotra's naval infrastructure was already in the pipeline. Barely a few days prior (December 29, 2009) to the Petraeus-Saleh discussions (January 2, 2010), the Yemeni cabinet approved a US$14 million loan by Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) in support of the development of Socotra's seaport project.
The Great Game
The Socotra archipelago is part of the Great Game opposing Russia and America.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a military presence in Socotra, which at the time was part of South Yemen.
Barely a year ago, the Russians entered into renewed discussions with the Yemeni government regarding the establishment of a Naval base on Socotra island. A year later, in January 2010, in the week following the Petraeus-Saleh meeting, a Russian Navy communiqué "confirmed that Russia did not give up its plans to have bases for its ships... on Socotra island." (DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia), January 25, 2010)
The Petraeus-Saleh January 2, 2010 discussions were crucial in weakening Russian diplomatic overtures to the Yemeni government.
The US military has had its eye on the island of Socotra since the end of the Cold War.
In 1999, Socotra was chosen "as a site upon which the United States planned to build a signal intelligence system...." Yemeni opposition news media reported that "Yemen's administration had agreed to allow the U.S. military access to both a port and an airport on Socotra." According to the opposition daily Al-Haq, "a new civilian airport built on Socotra to promote tourism had conveniently been constructed in accordance with U.S. military specifications." (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), October 18, 2000)
The Militarization of the Indian Ocean
The establishment of a US military base in Socotra is part of the broader process of militarization of the Indian Ocean. The latter consists in integrating and linking Socotra into an existing structure as well as reinforcing the key role played by the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos archipelago.
The US Navy's geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan had intimated, prior to First World War, that "whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean [will] be a prominent player on the international scene.".(Indian Ocean and our Security).
What was at stake in Rear Admiral Mahan's writings was the strategic control by the US of major Ocean sea ways and of the Indian Ocean in particular: "This ocean is the key to the seven seas in the twenty-first century; the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters."
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, which hosts the award winning website: www.globalresearch.ca . He is the author of the international best-seller "The Globalisation of Poverty and The New World Order". He is contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.
Related Global Research Article: See Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean, Global Research, 8 January 2010.
Source-Source-Global research.ca
Masirah, Oman
Source-Global security.org
Oman Facilities
The United States has maintained relations with the Sultanate since the early years of American independence. A treaty of friendship and navigation, one of the first agreements of its kind with an Arab state, was concluded between the United States and Muscat in 1833. This treaty was replaced by the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights signed at Salalah on December 20, 1958.
A U.S. consulate was maintained in Muscat from 1880 until 1915. Thereafter, U.S. interests in Oman were handled by U.S. diplomats resident in other countries. In 1972, the U.S. ambassador in Kuwait was accredited also as the first U.S. ambassador to Oman, and the U.S. embassy, headed by a resident charge d'affaires, was opened. The first resident U.S. ambassador took up his post in July 1974. The Oman embassy was opened in Washington, DC, in 1973.
U.S.-Omani relations were deepened in 1980 by the conclusion of two important agreements. One provided access to Omani military facilities by U.S. forces under agreed-upon conditions. The other agreement established a Joint Commission for Economic and Technical Cooperation, located in Muscat, to provide U.S. economic assistance to Oman. The Joint Commission continued in existence until the mid-1990s. A Peace Corps program, which assisted Oman mainly in the fields of health and education, was initiated in 1973 and phased out in 1983. A team from the Federal Aviation Administration worked with Oman's Civil Aviation Department on a reimbursable basis but was phased out in 1992.
In 1974 and April 1983, Sultan Qaboos made state visits to the United States. Vice President Bush visited Oman in 1984 and 1986, and President Clinton visited briefly in March 2000.
Oman, perhaps the strongest supporter of the US presence in the Gulf, signed an access agreement with the United States in 1981, an unpopular time to do so. It hosts three Air Force pre-positioning sites with support equipment for 26,000 personnel as well as required equipment and fuel to maintain three air bases.
USAF Prepositioned War Reserve Materiel (WRM) provides support to bare base systems, medical, munitions, fuels mobility support equipment, vehicles, rations, aerospace ground equipment, air base operability equipment, and associated spares and other consumables at designated locations. Responsible for asset receipt, accountability, serviceability, storage, security, periodic inspection and test, maintenance, repair, outload, and reconstitution of prepositioned WRM. Current WRM operating locations include Seeb, Thumrait, Masirah, Oman; Al Udeid, Qatar; and Manama, Bahrain.
Services under the War Reserve Materiel (WRM) contract are performed by DynCorp Technical Services at Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) bases at Masirah, Thumrait, and Seeb; Al Udeid, Qatar; Manama, Bahrain; and Shaw AFB, SC. DynCorp provides support to bare base systems, medical, munitions, fuels mobility support equipment, vehicles, rations, aerospace ground equipment, air base operability equipment, and associated spares and other consumables at designated locations. Responsible for asset receipt, accountability, serviceability, storage, security, periodic inspection and test, maintenance, repair, outload, and reconstitution of prepositioned WRM. This is a one year contract with an option to renew the contract. Total length of contract is seven years.
Services include maintaining war reserve materiel (WRM) stored in the Sultanate of Oman, State of Bahrain, and State of Qatar. In Oman, contract performance is on Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) government installations, and all access to the installations is controlled by the RAFO Security. In Bahrain, performance is in an area controlled by US Navy and Bahrain Port Authority. In Qatar, the Host Nation controls access to the work site.
War reserve materiel includes medical and munitions, warehousing of rations, and various other supplies. The contractor shall be responsible for performing all or any specifically designated portions of the functions accomplished under this contract during any wartime operations. Wartime operations are those actions, including contingency planning, which would be required to support current or any future United States Air Force wartime requirement. Emergency situations (i.e., accident and rescue operations, civil disturbances, natural disasters and military peacetime contingency operations and exercises) may necessitate the Contractor provide increased or reduced support as indicated below when required by Contracting Officer. Military contingency operations may necessitate military personnel assistance be provided to the Contractor. Should this occur, the Contractor will be relieved of responsibilities and accountability for the phase of the contract taken over by the military. Optional WRM sites may be exercised at any time during the performance of this contract. In the event the Government adds a new site to the contract, both parties to this contract hereby agree to negotiate in good faith the applicable price necessary to account for the change.
Since 1981 there has been an ongoing program to harden and upgrade Oman's key airfields, including the construction of hardened aircraft shelters (HAS), the lengthening and strengthening of runways, and development of extensive support facilities, ordnance depots and fuel dumps. The northern bases -- Seeb, Masirah and Khasab -- have been the primary focus of these projects. Seeb is the main transport and logistic base, collocated with the international airport, while Masirah supports air defence and strike/interdiction. Both host airborne surveillance over land and ocean approaches.
AH-64 Apache Longbows
April 24th -25th 1980 United States Military Failed Rescue attempt of Hostages in Iran.
Source-FreeRepublic
Desert One
The mission was to rescue the hostages held in Iran, but it ended in disaster.
Iranian soldiers survey the wreckage of the aborted US military attempt to rescue hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran. Eight American servicemen died in a disastrous accident as the rescue forces pulled back from the mission.
By Otto Kreisher
For some, the current political debate over the combat readiness of today's American military stirs memories of a long-ago event that, more than anything else, came to symbolize the disastrously "hollow" forces of the post-Vietnam era.
It began in the evening of April 24, 1980, when a supposedly elite US military force launched a bold but doomed attempt to rescue their fellow American citizens and their nation's honor from captivity in Tehran. In the early hours of April 25, the effort ended in fiery disaster at a remote spot in Iran known ever after as Desert One.
This failed attempt to rescue 53 hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran resulted in the death of five US Air Force men and three Marines, serious injuries to five other troops, and the loss of eight aircraft. That failure would haunt the US military for years and would torment some of the key participants for the rest of their lives.
One, Air Force Col. James Kyle, called it, "The most colossal episode of hope, despair, and tragedy I had experienced in nearly three decades of military service."
The countdown to this tragedy opened exactly 20 years ago, in January 1979. A popular uprising in Iran forced the
sudden abdication and flight into exile of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the longtime ruler of Iran and staunch
US ally. Brought to power in the wake of this event was a government led, in name, by Shahpur Bakhtiar and
Abolhassan Bani Sadr. Within months, they, too, had been shoved aside, replaced by fundamentalist Shiite Muslim
clerics led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
This secretly taken photo shows how Iranian troops blanketed the streets, making it difficult for the US to obtain intelligence. The CIA's spy network had been dismantled, one of many problems facing the rescue planners.
On Nov. 4, two weeks after President Jimmy Carter had allowed the shah to enter the US for medical care, 3,000 Iranian "student" radicals invaded the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. Chief of Mission L. Bruce Laingen and two aides were held separately at the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
The students demanded that the shah be returned for trial. Khomeini's supporters blocked all efforts to free the hostages.
Thirteen black and female hostages would be released later as a "humanitarian" gesture, but the humiliating captivity for the others would drag on for 14 months.
Rice Bowl
Carter, facing a re-election battle in 1980, strongly favored a diplomatic solution, but his national security advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, directed the Pentagon to begin planning for a rescue mission or retaliatory strikes in case the hostages were harmed. In response, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. David C. Jones, established a small, secretive planning group, dubbed "Rice Bowl," to study American options for a rescue effort.
It quickly became clear how difficult that would be.
The first obstacle was the location. Tehran was isolated, surrounded by more than 700 miles of desert and mountains in any direction. This cut the city off from ready attack by US air or naval forces. Moreover, the embassy was in the heart of the city congested by more than four million people.
A bigger hurdle, however, was the condition of the US military, which had plummeted in size and quality in the seven years since it had staged a near-total withdrawal from Vietnam. Among the casualties of the postVietnam cutbacks was the once-powerful array of Army and Air Force special operations forces that had performed feats of great bravery and military skill in Southeast Asia.
The one exception was an elite unit of soldiers recently formed to counter the danger of international terror. This unit, called Delta Force, was commanded by Army Col. Charles Beckwith, a combat-tested special forces officer. Delta, which had just been certified as operational after conducting a hostage rescue exercise, was directed to start planning for the real thing at the Tehran embassy.
The immediate question was how to get Delta close enough to do its job. Directing the planners who were trying to solve that riddle was Army Maj. Gen. James Vaught, a veteran of three wars, with Ranger and airborne experience but no exposure to special operations or multiservice missions. Because of the need for extreme secrecy, he was denied the use of an existing JCS or service organization. Vaught had to assemble his planning team and the joint task force that would conduct the mission from widely scattered sources.
One of the early selections was Kyle, a highly regarded veteran of air commando operations in Vietnam, who would help plan the air mission and would be on-scene commander at Desert One.
When Beckwith ruled out a parachute drop, helicopters became the best option for reaching Tehran, despite the doubts Beckwith and other Vietnam veterans had about their reliability. Navy RH-53D Sea Stallions, which were used as airborne minesweepers, were chosen because of their superior range and load-carrying capability and their ability to operate from an aircraft carrier.
Even the Navy Sea Stallions could not fly from the Indian Ocean to Tehran without refueling. After testing and rejecting alternatives, the task force opted to use Air Force EC-130 Hercules transports rigged with temporary 18,000-gallon fuel bladders to refuel the helicopters on their way to Tehran.
Finding the Spot
However, that decision led to the requirement of finding a spot in the Iranian desert where the refueling could take place on the ground. That required terrain that would support the weight of the gas-bloated Hercules.
US intelligence found and explored just such a location, about 200 miles southeast of Tehran. In planning and training, this site was known as Desert One.
Because the RH-53s were Navy aircraft, the Pentagon assigned Navy pilots to fly them and added Marine copilots to provide experience with land assault missions.
That combination soon proved unworkable, as many of the Navy's pilots were unable or unwilling to master the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of long-range, low-level flying over land, at night, using primitive night vision goggles.
In December, most of the Navy pilots were replaced by Marines carefully selected for their experience in night and low-level flying. The mission ultimately had 16 pilots: 12 Marine, three Navy, and one Air Force.
Selected to lead the helicopter element was Marine Lt. Col. Edward Seiffert, a veteran H-53 pilot who had flown long-range search-and-rescue missions in Vietnam and had considerable experience flying with night vision goggles.
Beckwith described Seiffert as "a no-nonsense, humorless--some felt rigid--officer who wanted to get on with the job."
Delta and the helicopter crews never developed the coordination and trust that are essential to high-stress, complex combat missions. Possibly, this was caused by the disjointed nature of the task force and its training.
While the helicopter crews worked out of Yuma, Ariz., the members of Delta Force did most of their training in the woods of North Carolina. Other Army personnel were drilling in Europe. The Air Force crews that would take part in the mission trained in Florida or Guam, thousands of miles away in the Pacific.
The entire operation was being directed by a loosely assembled staff in Washington, D.C., which insisted that all the elements had to be further isolated by a tightly controlled flow of information that would protect operational
security.
"Ours was a tenuous amalgamation of forces held together by an intense common desire to succeed, but we were slow coming together as a team," Kyle wrote in his account of the mission.
Meanwhile, Beckwith and his staff were desperate for detailed information on the physical layout of the embassy, the numbers and locations of the Iranian guards, and, most important, the location of the hostages.
C-130s were to fly the rescue force from Masirah to Desert One. Helicopters, flown from Nimitz, would carry the rescuers to a hideout near Tehran. The next night, the commandos were to drive to the embassy to release the hostages. The helicopters then were to carry the rescuers and hostages to the abandoned Manzariyeh air base, where C-141s would fly them to Egypt.
Six Buildings
Without that data, Delta had to plan to search up to six buildings in the embassy compound where the hostages might be held. That required Beckwith to increase the size of his assault force, which meant more helicopters were needed.
No intelligence was coming out of Iran because Carter had dismantled the CIA's network of spies due to the agency's role in overthrowing governments in Vietnam and Latin America.
It would be months before agents could be inserted into Iran to supply the detailed intelligence Beckwith said was "the difference between failure and success, between humiliation and pride, between losing lives and saving them."
Despite all the obstacles, the task force by mid-March 1980 had developed what they considered a workable plan, and all of the diverse operational elements had become confident of their ability to carry it out.
The plan was staggering in its scope and complexity, bringing together scores of aircraft and thousands of men from all four services and from units scattered from Arizona to Okinawa, Japan.
The plan was this:
On the first night, six Air Force C-130s carrying 132 Delta commandos, Army Rangers, and support personnel and the helicopter fuel would fly from the island of Masirah, off the coast of Oman, more than 1,000 miles to Desert One, being refueled in flight from Air Force KC-135 tankers.
Eight Navy RH-53Ds would lift off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, about 50 miles south of the Iranian coast, and fly more than 600 miles to Desert One.
After refueling, the helicopters would carry the rescue force to a hideout in hills about 50 miles southeast of Tehran, then fly to a separate hiding spot nearby. The C-130s would return to Masirah, being refueled in flight again.
The next night, Delta would be driven to the embassy in vehicles obtained by the agents. A team of Rangers would go to rescue the three Americans held in the foreign ministry.
As the ground units were freeing the hostages, the helicopters would fly from their hiding spot to the embassy and the foreign ministry.
Three Air Force AC-130 gunships would arrive overhead to protect the rescue force from any Iranian counterattack and to destroy the jet fighters at the Tehran airport. The choppers would fly the rescue force and the freed hostages to an abandoned air base at Manzariyeh, about 50 miles southwest of Tehran, which was to be seized and protected by a Ranger company flown in on C-130s.
The helicopters would be destroyed and C-141s, flown in from Saudi Arabia, would then fly the entire group to a base in Egypt.
"Now a Reality"
After five months of planning, organizing, training, and a series of increasingly complex rehearsals, Kyle recalled: "The ability to rescue our people being held hostage, which didn't exist on Nov. 4, 1979, was now a reality." The team still needed Carter's permission to execute.
Although the shah had moved to Panama and then to Egypt, the 53 Americans remained hostages and the public was getting impatient. Finally, in a White House meeting of his top advisors on April 11, Carter gave up on diplomacy. "I told everyone that it was time for us to bring our hostages home; their safety and our national honor were at stake," Carter said in his memoirs.
Five days later, Jones, Vaught, and Beckwith briefed Carter at the White House on the plans for the rescue mission and expressed their confidence in their ability to pull it off.
Beckwith recalled that Carter told them: "I do not want to undertake this operation, but we have no other recourse. ... We're going to do this operation."
Carter then told Jones, "This is a military operation; you will run it. ... I don't want anyone else in this room involved."
The audacious operation was code-named "Eagle Claw." The target date was April 24-25.
Almost immediately, forces began to move to their jump-off points. By April 24, 44 aircraft were poised at six widely separated locations to perform or support the rescue mission. The RH-53s already were on Nimitz, where they had been stored with minimal care for months, but a frantic effort brought them up to what Seiffert and Navy officials insisted was top mechanical condition by launch day.
Beckwith and Seiffert had agreed that they would need a minimum of six flyable helicopters at Desert One for the mission to continue. Beckwith had asked for 10 helos on the carrier to cover for possible malfunctions, but the Navy claimed they could not store more than eight on the hangar deck.
Delta and many of the Air Force aircraft staged briefly at a Russian-built airfield at Wadi Qena, Egypt, which would serve as Vaught's headquarters for the mission. While at Wadi Qena on April 23, the task force received an intelligence report that all 53 hostages were being held in the embassy's chancery. Because he was not told the solid source of that information, Beckwith did not trust it enough to reduce his assault force, which may have been a critical decision.
The next day, with Delta Force and support elements on Masirah and the helicopter crews on Nimitz, Vaught received the final weather report. It promised the virtually clear weather that the mission required.
"Execute Mission"
Vaught sent a message to all units: "Execute mission as planned. God speed."
"There was cheering, and fists were jammed into the air with thumbs up. ... This was an emotional high for all of us," Kyle wrote.
That emotional high would crash into despair in about 12 hours.
The mission started in the twilight of April 24 with barely a hitch. Kyle and Beckwith flew out of Masirah on the lead MC-130 Combat Talon with some of the Delta troopers and an Air Force combat controller team. At about the same time, Seiffert led the helicopter force--given the call sign of "Bluebird"--from Nimitz and headed to the Iranian coast, 60 miles away.
The choppers had been fitted with two advanced navigation systems, but the pilots found them unreliable and were relying mainly on visual navigation as they cruised along at 200 feet. "We were fat, dumb, and happy," Seiffert recalled.
About 100 miles into Iran, the Talon ran into a thin cloud that reduced visibility but was not a problem at its cruise altitude of 2,000 feet. The cloud was a mass of suspended dust, called a "haboob," common to the Iranian desert. Air Force weather experts supporting the mission knew it was a possibility but apparently never told the mission pilots. Kyle said he considered sending a warning to the helicopters but decided it was not significant.
When the MC-130 ran into a much thicker cloud later, he did try to alert Seiffert, but the message never got through. It was just one of the communications glitches that would plague the mission.
The dust cloud that was a minor irritation to the Combat Talon became an extended torture for the helicopter pilots, who were trying to fly formation and visually navigate at 200 feet while wearing the crude night vision goggles. Visibly shaken Marine fliers later told Beckwith and Kyle the hours in the milk-like dust cloud were the worst experience of their lives, which for some included combat in Vietnam.
Things had started to go wrong even before the dust cloud.
Less than two hours into the flight, a warning light came on in the cockpit of Bluebird Six. The indicator, called the Blade Inspection Method, or BIM, warned of a possible leak of the pressurized nitrogen that filled the Sea Stallion's hollow rotors. In the H-53 models the Marines were used to flying, the BIM indicator usually meant a crack in one of the massive blades, which had caused rotor failures and several fatal crashes in the past. As a result, Marine H-53 pilots were trained to land quickly after a BIM warning.
The Navy's RH-53s, however, had newer BIM systems that usually did not foretell a blade failure. To that date, no RH-53 had experienced a blade break and the manufacturer had determined that the helicopter could fly safely for up to 79 hours at reduced speed after a BIM alert.
Down to Seven
However, the pilots of Bluebird Six did not know that. Thinking the craft unsafe to fly, the crew abandoned it in the desert and jumped aboard a helicopter that had landed to help.
The mission was down to seven helicopters.
Further inland, the remaining choppers were struggling with the dust cloud, which dropped visibility to yards and sent the cockpit temperature soaring. Although all the pilots were having difficulty, Bluebird Five was really suffering as progressive electrical system failures took away most of the pilot's essential flight and navigation instruments. The pilot, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rodney Davis, "was flying partial panel, needle-ball, wet compass--a real vertigo inducer," Seiffert said.
Fighting against the unnerving effects of vertigo-when your inner ear tells you the aircraft is turning while your eyes tell you it is not-and unaware of the location of the other helicopters or the weather at Desert One, Davis decided to turn back.
Davis did not know that he was about 25 minutes from clear air, which prevailed all the way to Desert One, because everyone was maintaining strict radio silence to avoid detection.
The mission now was down to the minimum six helicopters.
Meanwhile, the lead C-130 had landed at Desert One, and Beckwith's commandos had raced out to block the dirt road that traversed the site.
Within minutes, they stopped a bus with 44 persons at one end of the site and at the opposite end had to fire an anti-tank round into a gas tanker truck that refused to stop. The driver of the tanker leaped from his burning vehicle and escaped in a pickup that was following. Despite fears the mission might be compromised, the combat controllers quickly installed a portable navigation system and runway lights to guide the other mission aircraft to Desert One.
Soon, the remainder of Delta Force was on the ground and the three EC-130s were positioned to refuel the helicopters, which were supposed to arrive 20 minutes later.
But, as Kyle discovered months later, someone had miscalculated the choppers' flight time by 55 minutes and the first Bluebird was more than an hour away. Finally, the Sea Stallions lumbered in from the dark, coming in ones and twos, instead of a formation, and from different directions.
After considerable anxiety, the count was up to six helicopters on the ground at Desert One and the hopes for a successful rescue soared again.
But as the helicopters struggled through unexpected deep sand to get into position behind the tankers, one shut down its engines.
Bluebird Two had suffered a complete failure of its secondary hydraulic system, which was unrepairable and left it with minimal pressure for its flight controls. Although the pilot appeared willing to try taking his sick bird on to the hideout, Seiffert overruled him.
Kyle tried to talk Seiffert into taking the helo on, but he refused, warning that flying with the one system at such heavy weight and high temperature could result in a control lockup and a crash that would kill not only the crew but the Delta commandos on board. Kyle then asked Beckwith if he could reduce his assault force to go with five choppers, but he was equally adamant about not changing his plans.
Failure of Eagle Claw
It seemed clear the mission had to be aborted.
Kyle informed Vaught of the situation by satellite radio and the task force commander relayed that to Jones and the Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, at the Pentagon. When the word got to the White House, Carter asked Brown to get Beckwith's opinion. Told that Beckwith felt it necessary to abort, Carter said: "Let's go with his recommendation."
Eagle Claw had failed and the tense anticipation of success drained into frustration and anger.
Now Kyle was left with the unrehearsed job of getting everyone out of Iran. Because of the extended time on the ground, one of the C-130s was running low on fuel and had to leave soon. To allow that tanker to move, Kyle directed Marine Maj. James Schaefer to reposition his helicopter. With a flattened nose wheel, Schaefer could not taxi and tried to lift off to move his bird, stirring a blinding dust cloud.
As Kyle watched in horror, the helo slid sideways, slicing into the C-130 with its spinning rotors and igniting a raging fire. Red-hot chunks of metal flamed across the sky as munitions in both aircraft torched off.
Some of the Delta commandos had boarded the C-130 and they came tumbling out the side door as the Air Force loadmasters and senior soldiers tried to stop a spreading panic. Men were helping the injured away from the inferno.
The projectiles ejecting from the flaming wreckage were hitting the three nearby helicopters and their crews quickly fled.
Many of the people at Desert One that night credit Kyle with restoring order to the chaotic scene and getting all the living men and salvageable equipment out safely. But in the flaming funeral pyre of Eagle Claw's shattered hopes, they left the bodies of eight brave men.
On the departing C-130s, Delta medics treated four badly burned men, including Schaefer, his copilot, and two airmen. "We left a lot of hopes and dreams back there at Desert One, but the nightmares and despair were coming with us ... and would continue to haunt us for years, maybe forever," Kyle wrote later.
The hostages were released in January 1981 after the US and Iran reached an accord involving release of frozen Iranian assets. Lt. Col David Roeder, left, and Col. Thomas E. Schaefer were two of the USAF servicemen who were among those freed.
Holloway's Investigation
Although Carter went on television the next day to announce the failure of the mission and to accept the blame, Congress and the Pentagon launched inquiries to determine the reasons for the tragedy. The Pentagon probe was handled by a board of three retired and three serving flag officers representing all four services; it was led by retired Adm. James L. Holloway III. The commission's report listed 23 areas "that troubled us professionally about the mission-areas in which there appeared to be weaknesses."
"We are apprehensive that the critical tone of our discussion could be misinterpreted as an indictment of the able and brave men who planned and executed this operation. We encountered not a shred of evidence of culpable neglect or incompetence," the report said.
The commission concluded that the concept and plan for the mission were feasible and had a reasonable chance for success.
But, it noted, "the rescue mission was a high-risk operation. ... People and equipment were called upon to perform at the upper limits of human capacity and equipment capability. There was little margin to compensate for mistakes or plain bad luck."
The major criticism was of the "ad hoc" nature of the task force, a chain of command the commission felt was unclear, and an emphasis on operational secrecy it found excessive.
The commission also said the chances for success would have been improved if more backup helicopters had been provided, if a rehearsal of all mission components had been held, and if the helicopter pilots had had better access to weather information and the data on the RH-53s' BIM warning system.
And it suggested that Air Force helicopter pilots might have been better qualified for the mission.
However, the report also said, "The helicopter crews demonstrated a strong dedication toward mission accomplishment by their reluctance to abort under unusually difficult conditions." And it concluded that, "two factors combined to directly cause the mission abort: an unexpected helicopter failure rate and the low-visibility flight conditions en route to Desert One."
Beckwith openly blamed the helicopter pilots immediately after the mission. However, in his critique to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he attributed the failure to Murphy's Law and the use of an ad hoc organization for such a difficult mission. "We went out and found bits and pieces, people and equipment, brought them together occasionally, and then asked them to perform a highly complex mission," he said. "The parts all performed, but they didn't necessarily perform as a team."
He recommended creating an organization that, in essence, was the prototype of the Special Operations Command that Congress mandated in 1986.
Kyle, in his book on the mission, rejected the Holloway commission's conclusions and basically blamed Seiffert and the helicopter pilots for not climbing out of the dust cloud, for not using their radios to keep the formation intact, and for the three helicopter aborts.
He argued that the task force never had less than seven flyable helicopters. All that was lacking, he wrote, was "the guts to try."
Seiffert praised Beckwith and Kyle as professional warriors but disagreed with their criticism of him and his helicopter pilots. He equated his decision to ground the chopper with the failed hydraulic system to Beckwith's refusal to cut his assault force, and he refused to second-guess the two pilots who had aborted earlier.
Seiffert said he was confident that, had they gotten to Tehran, the mission would have succeeded. Kyle was equally certain, writing that: "It is my considered opinion that we came within a gnat's eyebrow of success."
Beckwith wrote in his memoirs that he had recurring nightmares after Desert One. However, he noted, "In none have I ever dreamed whether the mission would have been successful or not."
Otto Kreisher is the national security reporter for Copley News Service, based in Washington, D.C. His most recent article for Air Force Magazine, "To Protect the Force," appeared in the November 1998 issue.
This is an Air Force AC-130, a flying cannon. It has high speed machine guns and automatic cannons, and can fill a football field with a bullet in every square inch in a matter of seconds. These were the Air Force's protection they provided. They would also have been used to keep any Iranian aircraft from taking off from any airfield in the area, and also to keep the streets clear of any Iranians from around the embassy.
The RH-53 was a fine aircraft. Why everything went wrong is what we will ask ourselves for ever. It just seems that God did not want us to win that day, we did not have his favor.
Source-FreeRepublic/U.S. Hostages
Israel's War Against Iran
Oil Market, Exposure to the Middle-East & the Saudi Arabia-Iran-U.S. Axis.
Posted on January 27, 2012 by fmpdea
Given the ongoing straight of Hormuz crisis I thought it might be interesting gathering some information. The interest arises from the potential human and economic losses associated with any further escalation. Here I’ll focus on the economic aspect in the hope that the human toll will not actually happen. The issue is of course that an increase in oil prices is a well known economic shock, best understood as a contraction in aggregate supply that increases inflation and contracts output (GDP). This is not an abstraction, even for the EU, who has more or less cut all ties with Iran, given the transmission of transport costs to the consumer prices, in the event of an actual closing of the straight of Hormuz.
In my opinion any diplomatic solution is only reachable via an economic-military trade-off where the USA (1) withdraws the sanctions, (2) starts pushing for Saudi openness to Iranian investments and (3) promises to not intervene in Syria at the bequest of the Arab league (but maintains a military presence in the Persian gulf) in exchange for an end to the Iranian Nuclear programme.
Oil Exposure
Reuters has an interesting map of Middle East Oil Traffic Choke points, highlighting some of the most important strategic points for the Oil market in the Middle East.
It should make clear the strategic importance of countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Eritrea and Somalia. If it isn’t then the map below of US military bases in the region (or this one) should help. The overlap is blatant.
The Iranian Perspective-Apparently Iran wants 3 things...
”It wants the United States to reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf dramatically (which as shown before is quite intense). Having seen two U.S. interventions against Iraq and one against Afghanistan, Iran is aware of U.S. power and the way American political sentiment can shift. It experienced the shift from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, so it knows how fast things can change. Tehran sees the United States in the Persian Gulf coupled with U.S. and Israeli covert operations and destabilization campaigns as an unpredictable danger to Iranian national security.”
“The Iranians want to be recognized as the leading power in the region. This does not mean they intend to occupy any nation directly. It does mean that Iran doesn’t want Saudi Arabia, for example, to pose a military threat against it.” This is relevant in light of the Syrian conflict, the brutality of which creastes an evironment where “for the first time, there is the potential for a militarily viable target set for outside players acting on behalf of the rebels. The existence of that possibility might change the dynamic in Syria. When we take into account the atmospherics of the Arab League demands for a provisional government, some meaningful pressure might actually emerge. (…) This raises the risk that the sphere of influence Tehran is pursuing will be blocked by the fall of the al Assad regime. This would not pose a fundamental challenge to Iran, so long as its influence in Iraq remains intact, but it (…) could open the door to recalculations in Tehran as to the limits of Iranian influence and the threat to their national security.(….) Iran has long felt that its natural role as leader in the Persian Gulf has been thwarted, first by the Ottomans, then the British and now by the Americans, and they have wanted to create what they regard as the natural state of things.”.
“Iran wants a restructuring of oil revenue in the region. How this is formally achieved — whether by allowing Iranian investment in Arabian oil companies (possibly financed by the host country) or some other means — is unimportant. What does matter is that the Iranians want a bigger share of the region’s vast financial resources.”
The USA Perspective: With the Pyrrhic victories in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, the USA is no longer the uncontested super power. According to that analyst,
“The United States and its allies do not want Iran to get nuclear weapons. But more than that, they do not want to see Iran as the dominant conventional force in the area able to use its influence to undermine the Saudis”. This is problematic in terms of the regional influence that Iran gained in the aftermath of the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
“The United States doesn’t want a conflict with Iran. Iran doesn’t want one with the United States. Neither can be sure how such a conflict would play out. The Iranians want to sell oil. The Americans want the West to be able to buy oil. The issue really comes down to whether the United States wants to guarantee the flow of oil militarily or via a political accommodation”
If so, it is possible to see the USA as happy to lower sanction on Iran if the latter drops its nuclear programme. But it is unlikely that they try to accommodate them in exchange of vague and ambiguous commitments.
The Saudi Angle: This is where the analyst from Stratfor looses me. An hypothesis is made that the USA might choose to drop the Saudis and replace them by the Iranians. This makes no sense to me. The Saudis are reliable partners, where the USA has physically settled its military. It is accommodating and richer in oil. The Iranians are not. For the USA to pursue such a policy would not be out of preference for dealing with Iran but rather due to lack of choice caused by financial hardship. In that case there won’t be a trade off between Iranian and Arabic support but rather a complete withdrawal from the region by the USA. Let’s hope that by then the world has developped an efficient way to exploit solar energy…
Source- PlacedLuxembourg.com/Continued Here
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