Iran Shipping Terrorist Weapons Through Civilian Ports
As Yossi Heiman, an Israeli general, noted during the briefing:
Those containers could be on board any merchant ship in any port around the world. We are sure that the crew of the ship didn’t know anything about what they were carrying on board. When the captain saw what he was carrying, he started to sweat and didn’t understand how he had those containers on board his ship. And of course we are sure that the Port of Dumyat didn’t know anything about those explosives being carried and transferred inside the port.
When you deal with those kinds of explosives, you have to be very careful. Each one of us understands that. There is the issue of keeping it an insulated area, the way that it’s transported, and everything connected with how to deal with it. When you deal with those containers without any precautions at all, they can explode almost anywhere. And any one of your ships could carry one of those containers one day, and any one of your ports could deal with those explosives. And that’s the main issue here, that there are a lot of resolutions. When you are dealing with a terrorist group smuggling something, we can handle that, but when you are dealing with a country that has a full organization to send arms and explosives as civilian cargo, a lot of innocent people could be hurt anywhere and it can affect each one of us.
The Francop is by no means the first ship loaded with Iranian arms to be intercepted on its way to deliver munitions to terrorists.
The Monchegorsk had 98 containers of Iranian weapons removed from it earlier this year that were thought be destined for Hamas and Hezbollah. Also this year, U.S. troops boarded the German-owned Hansa India and found eight containers filled with small arms ammunition for Syria, where weapons and ammunition are routinely smuggled to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to terrorist groups in Iraq.
And these are just three of the seaborne smuggling operations where Iranian weapons were intercepted; no one knows how many thousands of tons of deadly cargo Iran secretly slips through the world’s ports in a given year. With the global reach of IRISL, shell organizations, and chartered shipping, the rogue state can easily transfer arms anywhere on the globe. Yet at this time few nations seem willing to confront Iran, despite the shipping being in direct contravention of numerous UN resolutions.
The international community has the capability of severely hampering the Iranian regime by taking strong steps against them, but it appears no nation has the fortitude to stop Iran. The world would rather allow Iranian power and influence to become an existential threat than face the wrath of their fury in the present. And while it probably doesn’t need to be said, you can include the United States among those nations that will fiddle while Iran practices to make the world burn. The Obama administration, already routinely criticized for a lackluster and feckless foreign policy, just appointed noted Iranian apologist John Limbert as the senior Iran official at the State Department.
What would finally force countries to act against Iran’s continued support of terrorism? The world would rather pretend that Iranian weapons smuggling isn’t a threat. We can only hope that continued inaction doesn’t come back to haunt us in the form of dead innocents.
We can learn a few things from this recent incident with the Israeli Navy. First, the Israeli Navy has some stunning intelligence-gathering capabilities. I just wish our CIA was as good and as effective as the Mossad, especially when it comes to gathering information in the Middle East. Second, if nobody believes it by now, you can certainly see that UN resolutions are meaningless and are easily broken, just like they were with the “Oil for Food” program with Iraq. It would be interesting to see if anyone at the UN was paid to look the other way as these shipments were made. That was the case with the Oil for Food program, I don’t see why the Iranians didn’t pay some UN officials to not make a stink about this. Third, the US, NATO, and the Israeli Navies have enough ships to blockade both Lebanon and Syria if they wanted to, searching all merchant ships bound for those countries for weapons. We should keep the blockade in effect until we slow the flow of arms into Lebanon and Syria to a trickle and those countries get the message that it’s not a smart idea to keep arming Hezbollah. Syria and Lebanon may protest, but there isn’t much they can do to stop a united naval blockade and they certainly won’t start a land war when they know they were wrong to smuggle arms to Hezbollah in the first place. But the fourth and major problem we should keep an eye on is that this incident shows how easy it would be to smuggle weapons, or a nuclear device, into this country via a container ship. This problem was widely discussed during the last election and only seems to become popular during elections. Once the election is over, then we tend to ignore this problem. My fellow Americans, it is insanity to ignore this problem any longer. Once day a major bomb or nuclear device will be smuggled in by ship into this country and then it will be too late. Act now to protect our ports, or we will certainly regret it later.
I’ve sailed containerships, and I’ve got some bad news for you.
You can’t stop terrorist weapons being smuggled at sea any more than you can stop drugs being smuggled that way.
The Israelis intercepted a shipment that had been trans-shipped only once, (and I’ve been to Damietta, it’s not Rotterdam or Houston in terms of volume of cargo).
If they route their cargo through two or three trans-shipment points, it will become all but untraceable.
If you want to stop this trade, we must either destroy the supplier or destroy the customer. As long as the producer and the consumer exist, they WILL dope out a way to enact a transaction.
I’m sorry, but it’s just a matter of time. We take them out, or they’ll take us out.
If the UN and the world had balls they would stop and search every cargo ship leaving Iran. But Iran knows they don’t. That is why they play the world “leaders” like suckers and strive undeterred and unimpeded on their way to nuclear weapons and at the same time ship arms to terrorists whos sole goal is to destroy Jews. But much of the UN has the same level of hate against Jews so their is little want to stop that.
This is really easy, just SINK EVERY cargo ship leaving an Iranian port. It will not take long for shipping companies to stop contracting with Iran. However, highly unlikely to be done with O as POTUS. But I am sure the Israelis would have no problem with this idea.
issue a letter of mark and let privateers do the job. couldn’t we hire some Somalians for the job? they know the neighborhood and they have experience.
Excuse me? You want action from the people that can’t even agree what a terrorist is?
As I type, the US Navy is using the traditional 12 Mile limit on national sea control zone.
LOST (Law Of the Seas Treaty) changes that limit to 271 miles. The Pirates have filed in the UN to prevent the US Navy from operating against pirates within that 271 mile limit. The State Department is siding with the UN.
The USA is prevented by treaty from taking action against the pirates, as a matter of fact , any action against the ships carring arms to terrorists is an act of piracy.
You guys need to put down the koolaid.
The ONLY way around this issue is to withdraw from several international treaties, first and foremost being the UN Charter. Ain’t gonna happen.