Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Iran
Readies Plan to Close Strait of
Hormuz
Kenneth R. Timmerman,
NewsMax.com
Wednesday, March 1,
2006
Iran's Revolutionary Guards are making preparations for a
massive assault on U.S. naval forces and international shipping in
the Persian Gulf, according to a former Iranian intelligence officer
who defected to the West in 2001.
The plans, which include the use of bottom-tethered mines
potentially capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers, were
designed to counter a U.S. land invasion and to close the Strait of
Hormuz, the defector said in a phone interview from his home in
Europe.
They would also be triggered if the United States or Israel
launched a pre-emptive strike on Iran to knock out nuclear and
missile facilities.
"The plan is to stop trade," the source said.
Between 15 and 16.5 million barrels of oil transit the Strait
of Hormuz each day, roughly 20 percent of the world's daily oil
production, according to the U.S. government's Energy Information
Administration.
The source provided NewsMax parts of a more than 30-page
contingency plan, which bears the stamp of the Strategic Studies
Center of the Iranian Navy, NDAJA. The document appears to have been
drafted in September or October of 2005.
The NDAJA document was just one part of a larger strike plan to
be coordinated by a single operational headquarters that would
integrate Revolutionary Guards missile units, strike aircraft,
surface and underwater naval vessels, Chinese-supplied C-801 and
C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines, coastal artillery, as well as
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The overall plans are being coordinated by the intelligence
office of the Ministry of Defense, known as HFADA.
Revolutionary Guards missile units have identified "more than
100 targets, including Saudi oil production and oil export centers,"
the defector said. "They have more than 45 to 50 Shahab-3 and
Shahab-4 missiles ready for shooting" against those targets and
against Israel, he added.
The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, warned the CIA in July 2001
that Iran was preparing a massive attack on America using Arab
terrorists flying airplanes, which he said was planned for Sept. 11,
2001. The CIA dismissed his claims and called him a fabricator.
The source also identified a previously unknown nuclear weapons
site last year to this writer, which was independently confirmed by
three separate intelligence agencies.
NewsMax showed the defector's documents to two native
Persian-speakers who each have more than 20 years of experience
analyzing intelligence documents from the Islamic Republic regime.
They believed the documents were authentic.
A U.S. military intelligence official, while unable to
authenticate the documents without seeing them, recognized the
Strategic Studies Center and noted that the individual whose name
appears as the author of the plan, Abbas Motaj, was head of the
Iranian navy until late 2005.
A former Revolutionary Guards officer, contacted by NewsMax in
Europe, immediately recognized the Naval Strategic Studies institute
from its Persian-language acronym, NDAJA. He provided independent
information on recent deployments of Shahab-3 missiles that coincided
with information contained in the NDAJA plan.
The Iranian contingency plan is summarized in an "Order of
Battle" map, which schematically lays out Iran's military and
strategic assets and how they will be used against U.S. military
forces from the Strait of Hormuz up to Busheir.
The map identifies three major areas of operations, called
"mass kill zones," where Iranian strategists believe they can
decimate a U.S.-led invasion force before it actually enters the
Persian Gulf.
The kill zones run from the low-lying coast just to the east of
Bandar Abbas, Iran's main port that sits in the bottleneck of the
Strait of Hormuz, to the ports of Jask and Shah Bahar on the Indian
Ocean, beyond the Strait.
Behind the kill zones are strategic missile launchers labeled
as "area of chemical operations," "area of biological warfare
operations," and "area where nuclear operations start."
Iran's overall battle management will be handled through C4I
and surveillance satellites. It is unclear in the documents shared
with NewsMax whether this refers to commercial satellites or
satellite intelligence obtained from allies, such as Russia or China.
Iran has satellite cooperation programs with both nations.
The map is labeled "the current status of military forces in
the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, 1384." 1384 is the Iranian
year that ends on March 20, 2006.
Iran plans to begin offensive operations by launching successive
waves of explosives-packed boats against U.S. warships in the Gulf,
piloted by "Ashura" or suicide bombers.
The first wave can draw on more than 1,000 small fast-attack
boats operated by the Revolutionary Guards navy, equipped with rocket
launchers, heavy machine-guns and possibly Sagger anti-tank
missiles.
In recent years, the Iranians have used these small boats to
practice "swarming" raids on commercial vessels and U.S. warships
patrolling the Persian Gulf.
The White House listed two such attacks in the list of 10
foiled al-Qaida terrorist attacks it released on Feb. 10. The attacks
were identified as a "plot by al-Qaida operatives to attack ships in
the [Persian] Gulf" in early 2003, and a separate plot to
"attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz."
A second wave of suicide attacks would be carried out by "suicide
submarines" and semi-submersible boats, before Iran deploys its
Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and Chinese-built Huodong missile
boats to attack U.S. warships, the source said.
The 114-foot Chinese boats are equipped with advanced radar-guided
C-802s, a sea-skimming cruise-missile with a 60-mile range against
which many U.S. naval analysts believe there is no effective
defense.
When Iran first tested the sea-launched C-802s a decade ago,
Vice Admiral Scott Redd, then commander of U.S. naval forces in the
Gulf, called them "a new dimension ... of the Iranian threat to
shipping."
Admiral Redd was appointed to head the National
Counterterrorism Center last year.
Iran's naval strategists believe the U.S. will attempt to land ground
forces to the east of Bandar Abbas. Their plans call for extensive
use of ground-launched tactical missiles, coastal artillery, as swell
as strategic missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia and Israel tipped with
chemical, biological and possibly nuclear warheads.
The Iranians also plan to lay huge minefields across the Persian Gulf
inside the Strait of Hormuz, effectively trapping ships that manage
to cross the Strait before they can enter the Gulf, where they can be
destroyed by coastal artillery and land-based "Silkworm" missile
batteries.
Today, Iran has sophisticated EM-53 bottom-tethered mines, which it
purchased from China in the 1990s. The EM-53 presents a serious
threat to major U.S. surface vessels, since its rocket-propelled
charge is capable of hitting the hull of its target at speeds in
excess of 70 miles per hour. Some analysts believe it can knock out a
U.S. aircraft carrier.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff has been warning about Iran's growing naval
buildup in the Persian Gulf for over a decade, and in a draft
presidential finding submitted to President Clinton in late February
1995, concluded that Iran already had the capability to close the
Strait of Hormuz.
"I think it would be problematic for any navy to face a combination
of mines, small boats, anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedoes, coastal
artillery, and Silkworms," said retired Navy Commander Joseph
Tenaglia, CEO of Tactical Defense Concepts, a maritime security
company. "This is a credible threat."
In Tenaglia's view, "the major problem will be the mines. Naval
minefields are hard to locate and to sweep," and the United States
has few minesweepers. "It's going to be like running the gauntlet
getting through there," he said.
When Iran last mined the Gulf, in 1987-1988, several U.S. ships and
reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers were hit, even though the mines they
used were similar to those used in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915,
Tenaglia said.
The biggest challenge facing Iran today would be to actually lay the
mines without getting caught. "If they are successful in getting
mines into the water, it's going to take us months to get them out,"
Tenaglia said.