News Report: Islamabad Eyes New Chinese Naval Base in Pakistan as US, Saudi Influence Wanes

Chinese Navy Warships on Patrol (File Photo)

Pakistan is renewing a 2011 call to the People’s Liberation Army Navy to construct and operate a naval base on its coast, according to a Pakistani diplomat.

Islamabad needs an “equalizer” against India, the emissary noted in comments published at the Asia Times. “Previously, it was the US and Saudi Arabia… Now, it’s China,” he said.

A recent report prepared by the Pentagon signals Washington is growing concerned with the activities of the world’s largest army and burgeoning naval fleet. The US Defense Department anticipates that diplomatic chatter may materialize in the form of an actual base, perhaps in Gwadar Port in Balochistan, a trading hub Beijing seeks to develop with investment as part of the One Belt initiative.

Jiwani and Ormara are also said to be potential sites for a new navy base. 

Think Tank: Sea, air, land and space updates (20-Jun-2017)

Boeing's Echo Voyager UUV (Click Image to Enlarge)

Zoe Glasson, Sophie Qin, Madeleine Nyst and Patrick Kennedy

Sea State

An Iranian ship came within 730m of three US Navy vessels (an amphibious assault ship, a guided-missile destroyer and a dry cargo ship) in the Strait of Hormuz last week. The Iranian vessel shined a spotlight on the destroyer before training a laser on a CH-53E helicopter flying alongside it, prompting the USN to label the incident as an ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ encounter. While this encounter isn’t the first instance of harassment by Iran in this strategic waterway, what was unusual was that the ship involved formed part of the Iranian Navy, rather than the Revolutionary Guards’ Navy which normally carries out acts of that nature.

Last Sunday Iran and China completed a joint naval exercise in the Strait involving 700 Iranian personnel. For an analytical deep-dive into the Strait of Hormuz’s strategic significance and the viability of Iran’s asymmetric warfare, check out a two-part series from the Center for International Maritime Security (here and here).

The USN, Boeing and Huntington Ingalls have joined forces in an underwater endeavour to build the Echo Voyager, a would-be ‘massive unmanned, autonomous submarine’ able to fire missiles, drop mines and stay submerged for months. Boeing is currently testing the drone off the coast of California.

News Story: Pakistan Gives China a 40-Year Lease for Gwadar Port

On April 20, Pakistan’s minister for ports and shipping announced that his ministry has given a Chinese firm a forty-year lease for the strategic Port of Gwadar. 

The lessee, state-owned China Overseas Port Holding Company, has been building out the port’s infrastructure since 2013. Under its new long-term contract, it will retain over 90 percent of revenue from Gwadar’s marine operations, plus 85 percent of the revenue from the management of an adjacent free zone. It will also benefit from the deep tax exemptions that Pakistan has granted to Chinese companies for projects related to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a network of transportation infrastructure stretching from the Arabian Sea to the Chinese border. 

“We hope to create a new economic development model for the port by transplanting China’s experience in building special zones or economic development areas to Pakistan, in a bid to drive the country’s industrial transformation,” said COPHC CEO Zhang Baozhong, in comments to China Daily. 

Read the full story at MarEx

News Story: Iran urges U.S. naval forces to leave Persian Gulf

TEHRAN, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Iran's defense minister on Thursday called on the U.S. naval forces to leave the Persian Gulf, Tasnim news agency reported.

"What is the business of the Americans in the Persian Gulf? They are better to leave this region and do not cause problems for the regional states," Hossein Dehqan said.

"Is it acceptable to lay the red carpet for an ignorant armed thief who enters one's house," Dehqan said in a reaction to the U.S. naval commanders' claims that the Iranian naval forces harass U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: Ports For Pawns - How India-China Rivalry is Panning Out in the Persian Gulf

India-backed Chabahar port and China-developed Gwadar port could become the launch pads for a strategic rivalry between New Delhi and Beijing. But, it may also open another route for trade and commerce cooperation under the One Belt, One Road initiative.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — The Chinese Navy's latest plans to expand its marine corps and station new marine brigades in Gwadar, Pakistan and in Djibouti near the Gulf of Aden, will raise eyebrows in New Delhi and give fresh impetus to Indian efforts to expedite the completion of the Chabahar port in Iran. India's shipping minister Nitin Gadkari had expressed optimism last week that the first phase of the strategically located port in Iran will be complete by 2018.

What the two seemingly unrelated developments bring to the fore is that India-China rivalry is expanding in the Persian Gulf with both countries hedging their bets on strategically located ports and increasing their naval presence.

Think Tank: Sea, air, land and space updates (7-Mar-2017)

Zoe Glasson, Sophie Qin, Madeleine Nyst and Patrick Kennedy

Sea State

Last week’s US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report, Iranian Naval Forces: A Tale of Two Navies, says Iran’s developing a new Besat-class submarine with anti-ship cruise missile capability. It’s believed the development aims to better enable Iran to target the US Navy in the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts caution however, that the Iranians tend to overstate their abilities and reports that they’re already “building” should be ‘take[n] with a grain of salt’. ONI also reports Iran’s likely to ‘go on an international shopping spree’ for naval capabilities come 2020 when the UN’s conventional weapons acquisition ban is due to expire.

US defence budget increases in 2018 apparently won’t extend to the Coast Guard, which is facing a US$1.3 billion cut. Already reported to be under-resourced and overstretched, the Coast Guard protects 95,000 miles of coastline with a force of just 56,000. Proposed cutbacks would eliminate the counterterrorism unit and all regional Maritime Safety and Security teams—some of which provide security for President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago visits.

News Report: Pakistan Builds New Missile Ship to Shield Chinese Trade Routes

Pakistan's 1st Azmat class Fast Attack Craft

Pakistan has officially begun construction of a missile warship that the country hopes will guarantee the integrity of its vital trade corridor with China.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is key to the financial and national security interests of both countries. For Islamabad, Beijing’s capital investment in infrastructure projects offers promise to give the country’s economy a much-needed boost. But Beijing also relies on Pakistan’s navy to ensure the safety of oil shipments from the Arabian Sea and surrounding maritime regions.

In that regard, China is sharing Azmat-class ship technology with Islamabad, including the “latest weapons and sensors,” according to the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Public Relation media branch.

News Story: Iran warns Saudi navy to stay away from its waters during exercises

TEHRAN, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said Wednesday that all military vessels partaking in Saudi Arabia's ongoing wargames in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, should keep off from Iranian waters.

In a statement, the IRGC warned that any act of transgression into Iran's territorial waters shall be met with an immediate and proper response, Press TV reported.

IRGC considers the ongoing wargames, attended by Saudi and non-Saudi naval vessels, as an evident attempt to foment tensions and violate sustainable security in the Persian Gulf, the statement was cited as reading.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Behavior of Iranian ships in Strait of Hormuz "not acceptable" - White House

USS Nitze (Image: Wiki Commons)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- The behavior of four Iranian vessels that approached a U.S. warship in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz is "not acceptable" and such action could "unnecessarily escalate tensions," the White House said Thursday.

"At this point it's not clear what the intentions of the Iranian ships were, but the behavior is not acceptable, given that this U.S. ship was in international waters," White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told a regular press briefing.

"These types of actions and incidents are concerning, and they have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions," he said.

Four Iranian vessels carried out a "high-speed intercept" of a U.S. destroyer on Tuesday around the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. media reported on Wednesday.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Four Iranian vessels intercept U.S. destroyer around Strait of Hormuz

USS Nitze (Image: Wiki Commons)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Four Iranian vessels carried out a "high-speed intercept" of a U.S. destroyer on Tuesday around the Strait of Hormuz, local media reported on Wednesday.

Citing a U.S. Navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Fox News reported that the United States deemed the incident "unsafe and unprofessional", adding that two of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps vessels came within 300 yards of the USS Nitze.

Read the full story at Xinhua

Think Tank: Sea, air and land updates (10-MAY-2016)

Type 214 submarine (Image: Wiki Commons)

Dione Hodgson, Ashleigh Sharp and Lachlan Wilson

Sea State

Germany has offered India a formal proposal to build six diesel-electric Type 214 submarines. According to Indian defence officials, the Ministry of Defence is currently reviewing the proposal, which would see the submarines be built by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel, Germany. It’s been a big few weeks for India’s navy; on 1 May INS Kalvari— first of India’s new indigenous diesel-electric attack submarine class—completed sea trials outside Mumbai Harbour, while the country’s first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine is expected to be commissioned in coming months. In light of these developments, The Diplomat has taken a look at why India requires both nuclear and conventional submarines.

Iranian forces have declared they will prevent the US and its allies from accessing the Strait of Hormuz if they continue to ‘threaten’ the country, according to Iranian state media on 4 May. The two countries have a history of tensions regarding the strait—including the capture of 10 US sailors by Iran in January 2016. Foreign Policy has an interesting analysis of the strategic implications of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz here.

For a look into the operations of the USN’s Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, CNN joined the crew of USS Missouri last week for exercises off the Florida coast. You can check out the footage of their visit here.

News Story: Iran, Pakistan to stage joint naval drills in Strait of Hormuz

TEHRAN, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Iran and Pakistan are going to hold joint naval drills in the Persian Gulf waters later on Tuesday, Tasnim news agency reported.

The drills will be held in cooperation with a Pakistani flotilla of warships that has been staying in Iran's southern port city of Bandar Abbas for the past four days, Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told Tasnim on Tuesday.

Sayyari did not explain on the dimensions of the military exercise but said that it will be staged in the east of the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

Read the full story at Xinhua

Editorial: Can CPEC Become a Reconciliation Force in Balochistan?

By Umair Jamal

A major infrastructure initiative between China and Pakistan could spur reconciliation in Balochistan.

A few months ago, the leader of an outlawed Baloch separatist party hinted that “If our friends, companions, political allies and finally the people are in favor of this [reconciliation with Pakistan], then we are definitely ready to live with Pakistan.”

Pakistan has faced the Baloch rebellion since its inception. Insurgency in Balochistan has evolved over the decades. The largest uprising took place between 1973 and 1997 with some 80,000 Pakistani troops deployed in the province. Following the death of Nawaz Akbar Khan Bugti in August 2006, the movement surged again.

The movement has died down recently, with many self exiled Baloch separatist leaders toning down their independence rhetoric and asking their followers to consider the reconciliation approach towards their state. Brahamdagh Bugti, leader of the Balochistan Republican Party (BRP) – a separatist party – in a recent statement said that he is heading a democratic party and believes in dispute resolution through dialogue.

Arguably, part of this has to do with the growing economic activity in Balochistan, which irrespective of all negativity, is assured to bring economic prosperity to one of the least developed economic regions of the country. Perhaps economic gains have convinced both the Baloch separatist leaders and the state to rethink their mutual hard-line approach towards each other as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor cannot become a success story unless there is peace and stability in this region.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Chinese State Firm Takes Control of Strategically Vital Gwadar Port

Gwadar Port (Image: Wiki Commons)

By Ankit Panda

A Chinese state-owned firm officially signed a multi-decade lease for control of the Gwadar Port free-trade zone.

On Wednesday, Chinese Overseas Ports Holding Company Ltd (COPHCL), a Chinese state-owned enterprise, officially took control of the strategically important port at Gwadar in Pakistan. The Chinese firm officially signed a 40-year lease for over 2,000 acres of land in Gwadar, marking a milestone in the implementation phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a major bilateral initiative to build transportation and other infrastructure along the length of Pakistan, connecting the country’s Arabian Sea coast with the Himalayan border with China. CPEC was unveiled during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s April 2015 state visit to Pakistan, where Gwadar was high on the agenda.

Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Ahsan Iqbal handed over the lease to Wang Xiaodao, the vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission. Gwadar is a designated free-trade zone by the Pakistani government. The designation will last for 23 years. Additionally, because of Gwadar’s location in the restive southern Pakistani province of Balochistan, the Pakistani government has created a protection force for Chinese workers who will be working on CPEC projects, including at Gwadar.

The security situation in Balochistan is a concern for China, which wants to avoid CPEC projects and Chinese contractors potentially facing attacks. On Sunday, just days before the port hand-over, Pakistan’s chief of naval staff, Admiral Mohammad Zakaullah, said that the Pakistani Navy would also protect Gwadar “against all asymmetric threats under the prevalent precarious internal and external security environment.”

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: A Brief History of the US Navy in the Indian Ocean

Image: Flickr User - Greg Bishop

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri

As it celebrates its 240th birthday, the U.S. Navy would do well to keep the Indian Ocean in mind.

The U.S. Navy was officially founded as the Continental Navy 240 years ago, on October 13, 1775, during the American Revolutionary War. Since its inception, the U.S. Navy has been involved in the Atlantic Ocean. Later on, its operations spread to the Pacific as the United States expanded. However, a topic that has interested me lately is the history of the U.S. Navy in the Indian Ocean, which is not as well known as its exploits in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. This is despite the recent heavy American military involvement in areas of the Middle East and South Asia near or on the Indian Ocean littoral.

As noted by Robert Kaplan and many others, the Indian Ocean littoral is pivotal to the 21st century. This is but the re-emergence of a previous pattern that lasted until European colonialism, where the main corridor of world trade routes passed through the Indian Ocean. Today too, many global trade and energy routes pass through the Indian Ocean, and go either to some place along the littoral or on to Eastern Asia. Some of the contemporary world’s bloodiest conflicts are near this littoral, necessitating an American naval presence. Yet despite this fact, the Indian Ocean is part of the operating areas of three separate U.S. fleets. Two of these, the 6th and 7th also operate in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans respectively; only the 5th, based in Bahrain, whose area of operations encompasses the southern coast of the Middle East, Pakistan, and the Horn of Africa, is a fully Indian Ocean fleet. This is the legacy of a navy that has historically been oriented toward the United States’ own shores.

Through the 19th and first part of the 20th century, the Indian Ocean was essentially a British lake. Not only did the British control India, they controlled the various choke-points around the ocean to secure the sea lanes to their most valuable colony: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Aden (Bab-al-Mandab), the Strait of Hormuz, and the Strait of Malacca. American naval presence in or near the ocean was minimal, despite the acquisition of the Philippines in 1898 and increased involvement in the western Pacific. During World War I, the United States did not even declare war on the Ottoman Empire. The U.S. did not even have ambassadorial relations with Iran until 1944, after the 1943 Tehran Conference during World War II.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Sri Lanka - A Lesson for U.S. Strategy

By Kadira Pethiyagoda

Sri Lanka provides a glimpse of small power-great power relations in a future multipolar world order.

For much of the period since its independence, Sri Lanka attracted scant regard throughout the West. At the culmination of its civil war, some attention did begin to be paid to human rights issues. In the last few years, however, Sri Lanka has begun to feature as a country of strategic relevance to the great powers. For one, it sits at the center of the Indian Ocean, likely to be one of the world’s most strategically contested regions in the coming century. Sri Lanka is also halfway between China and its energy sources in the Middle East, something Beijing had responded to largely successfully until January this year when Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the presidency. Last week’s parliamentary elections were a further blow to Beijing, when Rajapaksa’s party lost to the center-right United National Party led by pro-Western Ranil Wickramasinghe

All this is far from a deathblow to China in Sri Lanka though, and Western policymakers should not see the election as cause for again taking the island state for granted. Rather, Colombo’s interactions with the great powers should provide lessons for Washington on a re-emerging paradigm in world politics, one that it should note in its approach to the Middle East. A reprioritization of certain drivers of foreign policy is needed in order to successfully compete with China in the future multipolar world order.

In the decades following independence, Sri Lanka’s future looked bright and it was expected to develop more rapidly than Singapore. The two were compared because both were small, highly educated, multicultural Asian states straddling important shipping lanes. The winds of national fortune blew in another direction, however, and Sri Lanka became bogged down in a vicious insurgency that eventually became Asia’s longest running civil war. The war received little attention from the West until its culmination, at which point discussion was centered on human rights – what strategists might deem a second order security concern.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Iranian Boats Fire on Singapore-Flagged Tanker in Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf (Image: Wiki Commons)

By Prashanth Parameswaran

Incident comes amid rising regional tensions.

Five Iranian boats fired shots across the bow of a Singapore-flagged tanker in the Persian Gulf on Thursday.

The captain of the Alpine Eternity, an oil products tanker, told Channel NewsAsia that five Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy ships approached the vessel and several shots were fired. The captain refused orders to stop the vessel and head to the Iranian port of Abu Musa, choosing instead to head to Dubai’s territorial waters. The captain said he was 15 miles off the Iranian coast at the time of the incident – three miles outside Iranian territorial waters.

According to CNN, while the ship did contact coalition warships in the vicinity to ask for help and a P-3 was sent overhead while the U.S. Navy began moving, the incident was over before it could get there. The UAE did send three of its coast guard boats out to the cargo vessel. Owner South Maritime later said in the statement that the ship had safely reached the port of Jebel Ali, and that there was no serious damage to the vessel and none of the crew members sustained any injuries.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Think Tank: Sea, air and land updates (5-May-2015)

Amelia Long, Palmo Tenzin and Sarah Hately

Sea State

This week’s release of ministerial advice under freedom of information laws has revealed that by discussing the high likelihood of Japan winning the SEA 1000 contract last year, Prime Minister Abbott acted against advice provided to government by the Department of Defence. Defence’s overwhelming preference was for the submarines to be built in Australia by ASC. Defence labelled a local build Australia’s only option for ‘assembly capability’, though it conceded that an international design partner would be required.

Also on future submarine fleets, The Diplomat released a piece on Thailand’s quest for three new submarines by 2020. The Bangkok Post reported on the possibility that the committee will propose to buy Chinese subs over other nations in contention, including South Korea, Russia, Germany and Sweden.

Editorial: In A2/AD Showcase, Iranian Navy Sinks Nimitz Carrier Mock-Up

By Franz-Stefan Gady

Does the video tell us anything about Iran’s anti-access/anti-denial capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz?

This week, Iranian television broadcasted a video showing the destruction of a U.S. warship replica near Larak Island, close to the strategically vital entrance to the Strait of Hormuz,  during a recent military exercise by the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard.  The military exercise, codenamed “Great Prophet 9,” was conducted by the naval branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and was meant to showcase Iran’s anti-access/anti-denial (A2/AD) capabilities.

Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the highest commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, boastfully told the local media during the “Great Prophet 9” exercise: “A unique power has been created, and we do not like to put it into practice. But if, God forbid, such a day comes, Iran’s navy will have the complete control over the Sea of Oman, the Hormuz Strait and the Persian Gulf.”

The Revolutionary Guards’ navy chief, Adm. Ali Fadavi, stated on state television that, “American aircraft carriers are very big ammunition depots housing a lot of missiles, rockets, torpedoes and everything else,” and added that a direct hit by a missile could set off a large secondary explosion within America’s capital ships, according to the New York Times. Fadavi also noted in the past that his forces are capable of sinking an American aircraft carrier in a future military confrontation with the United States. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Could Japan Go Minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz?

Yaeyama class minesweeper: JDS Tsushima
(Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons)

By Mina Pollmann

PM Abe’s LDP and the Komeito Party debate whether minesweeping operations qualify as collective self-defense.

During a plenary session of the House of Representatives on Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe affirmed that engaging in minesweeping operations in the Strait of Hormuz – if the straits were to be blockaded using undersea mines – would be a positive case of Japan using its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) abroad under the principle of collective self-defense. Such a hypothetical blockade “could be considered a situation that clearly causes as serious and significant damage as a direct armed attack on Japan. … [The impact of a blockade] would be far greater than those of the past oil crises and the world economy would be thrown into total disarray,” Abe warned.

Defense Minister Gen Nakatani supported Abe’s answers, explaining, “If mines are laid in the strait, it will halt oil supply, which will have a significant impact on the daily lives of Japanese citizens. As a result, the country’s existence will be threatened.” Abe and Nakatani are arguing that such a blockade would meet the criteria established last July for the right to exercise collective self-defense. The Cabinet decision to reinterpret Article 9 of Japan’s constitution stated that Japan can deploy the SDF overseas for collective self-defense purposes “when an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to fundamentally overturn people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In a hypothetical Strait of Hormuz crisis, Japan’s right to collective self-defense could also be invoked if there was a “clear danger” that force would be used against a U.S. warship carrying Japanese troops. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat