US Navy’s “Covert” Ops in the Gulf of Aden

Israel National News reported today that the US Navy aboard the USS San Antonio has  stopped a ship in the Gulf of Aden and set it on a course for Egypt for further inspection.  The  ship,  possibly flying a false Cypriot flag, was allegedly packed with Iranian munitions headed for Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post’s* source, Professor Raymond Tanter, was quoted as saying that the operation was probably “covert” because stopping a ship flying under the flag of a sovereign nation might provoke legal action against the perpetrator.  INN also claimed concerns in the intelligence community that Iran was using the boat to ship a so-called dirty bomb to Gaza, but which intelligence community the publication was talking about remains unclear.  (I’m betting on the Israelis, but what do I know from intelligence?)

If the Iranian  ship was indeed flying under a false flag, such an act could be considered not only ironic, but a rather tardy payback for the same strategy the CIA used in 1953  to stage a coup  against Iran’s then-democratically elected leader,  Mohammed Mosaddegh, who wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry.  (Blood for oil on a smaller scale, perhaps?)   In any event, the Shah returned from exile days later.  He was eventually overthrown in the 1979 Revolution which gave us Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, the predecessor of our current beloved,  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Unhappily–unless they’ve gotten a grip as I type–the US media remains mum.  But why?  This is a big H U G E story.  I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know whether there really are dirty bombs swimming up the Bab el Mandeb (anywhere near Somalia!) through the Red Sea before hitting the Suez Canal.  Is it just that the US media is too consumed with studying its collective navel, or does someone not want us to know?  Even if the intelligence were false–there have been rumors swirling ’round the Internet about a Yom Kippur plot–I’d like to know, thanks.

* Which news org I didn’t bother to check because I’m hackin’ up a lung here.  Pulled back muscles doin’ it, too. (Either that, or the  remaining lung is tunneling out below my left scapula.)

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