A week before the recent ballistic missile test deployed by North Korea, Iran promised to send warships to the Gulf of Mexico.
North Korea launched it’s latest missile test in an effort to further display it’s power to the world and according to Defense Secretary James mattis; ‘the missile launched demonstrated that North Korea had the ability to hit “everywhere in the world.”‘
The latest missile test was the first test conducted since September 2017 and came despite warnings from the White House. President Donald Trump stated after the launch that the US “will handle” the situation.
- The Hwasong-15 soared 4,475 kilometers (2,800 miles) in the sky
- The Ballistic Missile spent fifty-three minutes in air
- The missile was launched from the west part of North Korea
- The missile likely landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (in the ocean)
“Our fleet of warships will be sent to the Atlantic Ocean in the near future and will visit one of the friendly states in South America and the Gulf of Mexico,” Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi was quoted by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency as saying.
The newly appointed Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, announced on November 22nd, 2017, that Iran’s Navy would begin their tour to the gulf sometime in the near future.
Previously in 2014 Iran made a similar claim but the ships never arrived in the Gulf. However, once again, new leadership in Iran is reigniting the ambitions of the Iranian military; “No foreign military official could even imagine that the Iranian naval forces might reach the Atlantic Ocean,” Sayyari stated during a ceremony in August, adding that “no one saw it likely that Iranian forces could sail around Africa or go to the Suez Canal, but they proved to be capable of doing it.” Said Meir Javedanfar, Iran lecturer Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya and researcher at Meir Ezri Center for Iran & Persian Gulf Studies at Haifa University.
“Making an announcement is very different than actually being able to carry out such a big and sophisticated task of sending Iranian ships all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,”
“And even if Iran succeeds I think it’s going to be mostly for show for domestic purposes. The Iranians have said that the Americans have no business being in the Persian Gulf and therefore maybe by doing this they are trying to reciprocate by saying that ‘just as you come to our backyard we can come to your backyard.’”
The provocative military display is reportedly the latest attempt to rattle officials in the Trump administration.
Both Iran and North Korea, the axis of evil, share a common goal the destruction of the United States. The threat posed by the axis is becoming increasingly clear, what say you?
