Warships, Warships Everywhere, and Many a Bomb to Drop

Warships, Warships Everywhere, and Many a Bomb to Drop
Persian Gulf Update
by Michael T. Klare

May 04, 2007
TomDispatch
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Looking down from the captain’s deck some six stories high, the flight
deck of the USS Nimitz is an impressive sight indeed: 80 sleek
warplanes
armed with bombs and missiles are poised for takeoff at any minute, day
or
night. The sight of these planes coming and going from that
1,100-foot-long flight deck is almost beyond description. I can attest
to
this, having sailed on the Nimitz 25 years ago as a reporter for Mother
Jones magazine.



Today, the Nimitz is rapidly approaching the Persian Gulf, where it
will
join two other U.S. aircraft carriers and the French carrier Charles De
Gaulle in the largest concentration of naval firepower in the region
since
the launching of the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago.



Why this concentration now? Officially, the Nimitz is on its way to the
Gulf to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is due to return to
the United States for crew leave and ship maintenance after months on
station. But the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which exercises
command
authority over all U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area, refuses to say
when the Eisenhower will actually depart -- or even when the Nimitz
will
arrive.



For a time, at least, the United States will have three carrier battle
groups in the region. The USS John C. Stennis is the third. Each
carrier
is accompanied by a small flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, submarines,
and support vessels, many equipped with Tomahawk land-attack cruise
missiles (TLAMs). Minimally, this gives modern meaning to the classic
imperial term "gunboat diplomacy," which makes it all the stranger that
the deployment of the Nimitz is covered in our media, if at all, as the
most minor of news stories. And when the Nimitz sailed off into the
Pacific last month on its way to the Gulf, it simply disappeared off
media
radar screens like some classic "lost patrol."



Rest assured, unlike us, the Iranians have noticed. After all, with the
arrival of the Nimitz battle group, the Bush administration will be --
for
an unknown period of time -- in an optimal position to strike Iran with
a
punishing array of bombs and missiles should the President decide to
carry
out his oft-repeated threat to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program through
military action. "All options," as the administration loves to say,
remain
ominously "on the table."



Meanwhile, negotiations to resolve the impasse with Iran over its
pursuit
of uranium-enrichment technology -- a possible first step to the
manufacture of nuclear weapons -- continue at the United Nations in New
York and in various European capitals. So far, the Iranians have
refused
to give any ground, claiming that their activities are intended for
peaceful uses only and so are permitted under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which it is a signatory. The United
States has made vague promises of improved relations if and when Iran
terminates its nuclear program, but the full burden of making initial
concessions falls on Tehran.



Just this weekend, a conference in Egypt, called by Iraqi officials to
explore regional approaches to stability in the region (with Iranian
officials expected to be in attendance), was being viewed in Washington
as
yet another opportunity to pressure Tehran to be more submissive to the
West’s demands on a wide range of issues, including Iranian support for
Shiite militias in Iraq.



President Bush keeps insisting that he would like to see these
"diplomatic" endeavors -- as he describes them -- succeed, but he has
yet
to bring up a single proposal or incentive that might offer any
realistic
prospect of eliciting a positive Iranian response.



And so, knowing that his "diplomatic" efforts are almost certain to
fail,
Bush may simply be waiting for the day when he can announce to the
American people that he has "tried everything"; that "his patience has
run
out"; and that he can "no longer risk the security of the American
people"
by "indulging in further fruitless negotiations," thereby allowing the
Iranians "to proceed farther down the path of nuclear bomb-making," and
so
has taken the perilous but necessary step of ordering American forces
to
conduct air and missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. At that
point, the 80 planes aboard the Nimitz -- and those on the Eisenhower
and
the Stennis as well -- will be on their way to targets in Iran, along
with
hundreds of TLAMs and a host of other weapons now being assembled in
the
Gulf.





Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at
Hampshire College and author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and
Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum.



[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation
Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and
opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder
of
the American Empire Project and author of Mission Unaccomplished
(Nation
Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.]