TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Iran Pressured Onto a Precipice
Jordan Candler
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Moscow Sends Warships to
Havana in Message to US
By Bill Gertz
{ freebeacon.com } ~ Russia has dispatched several warships, including one of its newer missile frigates, to Cuba in a bid to bolster the floundering regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro... according to a senior administration official. "Anytime any Russian military platform arrives in the Western Hemisphere, we're taking a very close look at it," the official told the Washington Free Beacon. U.S. intelligence agencies first identified the small Russian naval task force headed by the guided missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov in the eastern Pacific around June 11 and followed the warships through the Panama Canal. The ships showed up in Havana harbor Monday and the official said it may conduct a passage near Venezuela, or make port there after it leaves Cuban waters. Support vessels included the logistics vessel Elbrus, medium sea tanker Kama, and rescue tug Nikolai Chiker, according to the Russian Navy. The official said the Gorshkov is one of the newer Russian warships but noted that "it's probably lucky it made it all the way across the Pacific Ocean." The dispatch of the naval group is "sending a signal by pulling into Havana at the same time that everything is going on in Venezuela." "There's no surprise that they would do that intentionally to kind of remind us they perceive they have some sort of leverage in the region," he said. Additionally, a Russian Air Force Il-62 transport brought in technicians to work on Russian military equipment used by the Venezuelans. "That sends a signal in its own right," the official said. "You've got millions of people starving in Venezuela. You've got no medicine, you've got no electricity, you've got gas shortages, lines for miles, and you're paying the Russians to come in and fix really old hardware, money that certainly should be used for humanitarian aid." The Il-62 brought both military personnel and equipment but no humanitarian aid. By contrast, the USS Comfort, a hospital ship, recently crossed through the Panama Canal on the way to Ecuador to provide medical relief....
U.S. Warship Shadowing
High-End Russian Frigate Near Cuba
By Ben Werner.
New High-End Amphibious Warfare
Tactics Tested at BALTOPS 2019
By Megan Eckstein.
Navy Tests New Mine Hunting
Kit With European Allies
By Megan Eckstein
{ news.usni.org } ~ ABOARD USS MOUNT WHITNEY, IN THE BALTIC SEA – As the U.S. Navy undergoes a major transition in how it conducts mine warfare... it had the chance to test out its newest tools during BALTOPS 2019 alongside European partners who are mine warfare experts. The excitement over new mine countermeasures (MCM) and offensive mining tools, as well as the expertise gained during this international exercise, comes as the U.S. Navy’s mine warfare (MIW) leaders are trying to further professionalize the community through the creation of MIW subject matter experts at the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC) and the incorporation of realistic MIW events in training exercises at home, SMWDC commanding officer Rear Adm. Scott Robertson told USNI News during the BALTOPS exercise. “Mine warfare is incredibly important. Historically, mine warfare directly determines whether you’re able to achieve sea control – and the absence of having the ability to deal with that can have significant impacts on our overall objectives,” he said during an interview aboard command ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20). Noting the transition from manned helicopters and ships to unmanned systems operating off a Littoral Combat Ship, Robertson said, “what better playground to be able to demonstrate that in than here during BALTOPS, where we are working with the allies and partners we will anticipate actually working with in a real-world event, in a very realistic environment, and having shapes in the water, in some challenging waters? There’s no better proving ground than here.” Robertson led the mine warfare task group in BALTOPS 2019, which was the largest task group in the exercise and included two existing task units – the Baltic Naval Squadron (BALTRON) and Standing NATO MCM Group 1 – as well as a third unit formed for the exercise. In total, Robertson led a force of more than 15 MCM ships, 15 unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), five drone ships and more than 70 divers, the Navy stated. Eleven countries contributed to this force, including many that have deep expertise in hunting and neutralizing mines due to the large number of World War II-era mines still in the Baltic Sea and other European waters....
New U.S. Curbs on China Target Supercomputers
By Bill Gertz
{ freebeacon.com } ~ As President Donald Trump prepares to talk trade with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Commerce Department blacklisted five Chinese entities linked to Beijing's large-scale nuclear arms buildup... Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added five Chinese companies and institutes to its "entities list," which is used to block sales of U.S. products to the firms based on threats to American security. The action was announced June 18 and follows similar punitive action in May against Huawei Technologies, the telecommunications conglomerate facing federal charges for economic espionage and illegal financial dealings. National Security Adviser John Bolton told the Free Beacon earlier this month that Trump would be meeting Xi in Osaka, Japan, at the upcoming G-20 summit set to begin Friday. "Obviously the impasse in the trade talks will be a big issue," Bolton said of the meeting in Japan. "The president believes that China is under pressure and that Xi Jinping will want to make a deal. They need to do a lot in terms of structural reform in the economy. They need to stop pursuing mercantilist policies like stealing our intellectual property and forced technology transfer." The first action taken by Trump was to issue a presidential order last month blocking American companies from buying telecommunications gear from foreign adversaries. The order did not name Huawei, but the company was added to the entities list, a move that has caused severe problems for the company. Huawei is expected to lose $30 billion in revenue from the U.S. sanctions, CNBC reported. Another Chinese telecom, ZTE, was placed on the entities list last year and nearly went bankrupt but was rescued after an appeal to Trump by Xi to take ZTE off the list. The company was fined instead $1 billion for doing business with Iran....
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Iran Pressured Onto a Precipice
Jordan Candler: Iran was (narrowly) spared an airstrike last week in the aftermath of its recent oil-tanker and drone attacks, but retaliation is still happening in the form of beefed-up sanctions. According to the White House website, “President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order [Monday] morning that imposes tough sanctions to deprive the Supreme Leader of Iran and some of his closest associates of key financial resources.”
In the president’s words: “[Yesterday’s] action follows a series of aggressive behaviors by the Iranian regime in recent weeks. The Supreme Leader of Iran is [the] one who ultimately is responsible for the hostile conduct of the regime. … His office oversees the regime’s most brutal instruments, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi bellowed in rebuttal, “Imposing useless sanctions … is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy.” He added, “Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”
Some hardcore interventionists disagree, but the leveling of additional sanctions is a balanced countermeasure. National Review’s David French explains one critical reason why that’s the case: “A small attack on three targets is a pinprick strike. The mullahs don’t care about [150] casualties, and a small attack does not materially impair Iranian striking power. Pinprick strikes are often seen as displays of weakness, not strength. A small attack would, however, grant the pretext for yet another Iranian escalation — perhaps one that would claim American lives, thus generating a much larger American response.”
Iran is no Libya or even Syria — its technology and military capabilities are far more sophisticated. So airstrikes should be reserved for extreme cases. Sanctions, on the other hand, are demonstrably effective. CNBC reports that the pressure placed on Iran’s oil exports from previous sanctions has pushed that nation’s economy onto a precipice. Any further reduction in this revenue source would likely result in a complete economic meltdown.
Columnist Ken Blackwell also suggests engaging the Iranian resistance. “The Iranian regime itself is clearly well aware of the potential for its own overthrow and is reacting with the expected sense of panic,” writes Blackwell, who concludes, “There is perhaps no greater threat to the Iranian regime’s hold on power than policies which make it clear that pressure from the international community and from Iran’s democratic resistance are one and the same.”
On that note, The Wall Street Journal observes, “Now would be a good moment for Europe to get off the fence and join the U.S. pressure campaign. … The same goes for the many Democratic presidential candidates who keep saying they’ll return without conditions to the 2015 nuclear deal.” Iran will continue to provoke, but its ability to do so without shooting itself in the foot is getting harder by the day — and will get even harder if global powers coalesce around the right pressure tactics.
~The Patriot Post
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