{"id":26522,"date":"2018-12-22T07:22:37","date_gmt":"2018-12-22T07:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26522"},"modified":"2018-12-22T07:22:37","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T07:22:37","slug":"nine-more-arrested-in-morocco-over-murder-of-scandinavian-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26522","title":{"rendered":"Nine more arrested in Morocco over murder of Scandinavian tourists"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nABOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF: A US aircraft carrier sailed into the Arabian Gulf on Friday, becoming the first since America\u2019s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and breaking the longest carrier absence in the volatile region since at least the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The arrival of the USS John C. Stennis comes as Iranian officials have returned to repeatedly threatening to close off the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes. Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels shadowed the Stennis and its strike group, at one point launching rockets away from it and flying a drone nearby.
The long absence of a carrier, however, could become a standard practice here as now-outgoing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought to shake up naval operations and American air bases spanning the region that can scramble fighter jets and drones.
\u201cWe are trying to be more operationally unpredictable,\u201d said Lt. Chloe Morgan, a spokeswoman for US\u2019 Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. \u201cNow we\u2019re switching it up because our adversaries are watching closely. We want to be operationally unpredictable to our enemies, but strategically predictable to our partners.\u201d
The Navy invited journalists to ride on the nuclear-powered Stennis, whose homeport is Bremerton, Washington, as it transited the Strait of Hormuz. The strait at its narrowest point is 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide, in the waters between Iran and Oman.
Despite being so narrow and within the territorial waters of those two nations, the strait is viewed as an international transit route. American forces routinely travel through the area, despite sometimes tense encounters with Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For Iran\u2019s part, they compare the American presence to Tehran sending warships to the Gulf Mexico.
Tensions have been high since President Donald Trump\u2019s May withdrawal from Iran\u2019s nuclear deal, which saw sanctions lifted for Tehran limiting its uranium enrichment. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate within the country\u2019s Shiite theocracy whose major achievement was the deal, has repeatedly warned any attempt to stop Iran\u2019s export of crude oil could see it close off the strait.
However, the 5th Fleet says it has not seen any \u201cunsafe and unprofessional\u201d actions by Iranian naval forces in the Arabian Gulf since August 2017 before the Stennis\u2019 transit through the strait.
Throughout its trip Friday, some 30 Iranian Revolution Guard vessels trailed the Stennis and its strike group. One small vessel launched what appeared to be a commercial-grade drone to film the American ships. Photographers and videographers on the Iranian boats could clearly be seen also filming the Stennis while journalists on board the aircraft carrier filmed them.
\u201cThe Iranian craft drove in front of our ship and stopped and tried to capture their own sort of picture of what was going on,\u201d said Capt. Randy Peck, the commanding officer of the Stennis.
There was no immediate mention of the Stennis\u2019 arrival to the Arabian Gulf in Iranian state media.
It represents a change in US military strategy dating back to the first Gulf War in 1991 and the\u00a0overflights of Iraq that followed for years after. Mattis, as the head of the US military\u2019s Central Command, himself demanded two carrier groups in the Arabian Gulf as he led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since then, Mattis has said he wants a more unpredictable Navy to respond to Russia and China, which he sees as the \u201cgreat power competition\u201d America now faces.
\u201cThe way you do this is we ensure that preparation for great power competition drives not simply a rotation schedule that allows me to tell you, three years from now, which aircraft carrier will be where,\u201d Mattis told a US House committee in April. \u201cThat\u2019s a great way to run a shipping line. It\u2019s no way to run a Navy.\u201d
It\u2019s unclear, however, whether Mattis\u2019 strategy will continue. The defense secretary resigned Thursday after clashing with Trump over the abrupt withdrawal of US troops from Syria.
The US military also operates air bases in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as a major Army base in Kuwait and Navy base in Bahrain. That offers the American military a variety of locations both in the Arabian Gulf, as well as other bases in the wider Mideast, to launch strikes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cCarriers were needed to support many of the initial strikes in Afghanistan in 2001, some attacks in Iraq in 2003, and most tactical missions in Syria in 2011,\u201d said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. \u201cAfter access to adequate ground bases was obtained for today\u2019s operations in Syria and Iraq, carrier-based aircraft were not as essential for these missions.\u201d
\u201cThe US does not need carriers in the Arabian Gulf,\u201d he added.
As military operations wind down in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, that likely will mean less need for airstrikes as well. However, the 5th Fleet still maintains a fleet of 21 ships from Bahrain and other Navy ships will continue to transit the strait.
\u201cThe American Navy is showing they\u2019re committed to regional stability all across the globe but particularly in the Gulf region,\u201d Peck said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very economically important area for the entire world, so we\u2019re going to continue to go wherever we can internationally, in international waters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ABOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF: A US aircraft carrier sailed into the Arabian Gulf on Friday, becoming the first since America\u2019s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and breaking the longest carrier absence in the volatile region since at least the Sept. 11 terror attacks.The arrival of the USS John…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}