Tag: Iran

Considering that South Korea receives most of their energy from the Middle East it seems like it would be in their interests to ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains open:

South Korea is closely monitoring the situation in waters off Iran, including the U.S.’ possible request for its troops dispatch to the region, the defense ministry said Monday.

The United States has been asking its allies to join a military coalition to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran.

“So far, we have not received any official requests from the U.S. side over the possible dispatch of our troops,” Col. Roh Jae-cheon, the deputy ministry spokesman, told a regular briefing.

“South Korea is keeping a close tab on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz while opening various possibilities in consideration of potential impacts the matter could have on our side,” he added.

Another official said that the ministry “is reviewing diverse options and measures with regards to the issue.”

Some observers have said that U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton could make such a request during his two-day visit here that begins Tuesday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but so far Iran has not messed with energy shipments to South Korea. South Korea has actually had good relations with Iran to include the prior President conducting a state visit.

President Moon might calculate that dispatching a naval presence to the Strait of the Hormuz could anger Iran. Another factor to consider is the ROK may not want to cooperate with the Japanese Navy if it participates in such a maritime mission as well. It will be interesting to see what President Moon decides if asked by the U.S. to participate in the mission.

The attacks on these ships just happens to occur while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting:

Two oil tankers were damaged in a suspected attack off the Gulf of Oman early Thursday, prompting the rescue of dozens of crew members.

The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet told Reuters it was assisting two tankers in the Gulf of Oman after receiving two distress calls. Details of the incident were unclear, but one of the operators made an unconfirmed report that a torpedo had hit its ship, Reuters reported.

“We are aware of the reported attack on tankers in the Gulf of Oman. U.S. Naval Forces in the region received two separate distress calls at 6:12 a.m. local time and a second one at 7:00 a.m.,” Joshua Frey of the Fifth Fleet said. The Fleet did not blame anyone for the attack.

One of the vessels involved was identified as the MT Front Altair, a Marshall Islands-flagged but Norwegian-owned crude oil tanker carrying naphtha, a petrochemical product, to Japan.

Fox News

A South Korean Hyundai ship based in Dubai actually rescued the crew of the Front Altair.

The obvious play here is that the Iranians attacked these ships because they did not like whatever message they received from Prime Minister Abe on behalf of President Trump. The Iranians have long threatened to shut down the Straits of Hormuz and cause world oil prices to surge and this is a reminder of that fact.

It is amazing to me that something so insecure was used to communicate with spies in Iran and China.  The US military gets non-stop information security training about using commercial websites and social media and here is American intelligence agencies operating an entire spy network on one:

Dozens of American spies were killed in Iran and China after a flawed communications service that allowed foreign foes to see what the agents were up to using Google, official sources have claimed.

Between 2009 and 2013 the US Central Intelligence Agency suffered a “catastrophic” secret communications failure in a website used by officers and their field agents around the world to speak to each other, according to a report in Yahoo News, which heard from 11 former intelligence and government officials about the previously unreported disaster.

“We’re still dealing with the fallout,” said one former national security official. “Dozens of people around the world were killed because of this.”

The internet-based communications platform was first used in the Middle East to communicate with soldiers in war zones and had not been intended for widespread use but due to its ease of use and efficacy, it was adopted by agents despite its lack of sophistication, the sources claimed.

Cracks only began to show when Iran, angered that the government under Barack Obama had discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapon factory, went out with a fine tooth comb to find moles.

It discovered the existence of one of the websites used by US agents using Google. US officials believe that Iranian spies were able to use Google as a search tool to find secret CIA websites, unbeknown to those using them.

By 2011, Iran had infiltrated the CIA spy network and in May it announced that they had broken up a 30-strong ring of American spies.

Some informants were executed and others imprisoned as a result, the sources claimed.

This was corroborated by a report on ABC news at the time, which referred to a compromised communications system after a tip off from the CIA.

This report makes me wonder if there is a arms for petroleum agreement going on between North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China?:

North Korea has reportedly sold arms and military equipment to Middle East countries in violation of the United Nations sanctions.

The Wall Street Journal issued the report on Saturday citing a secret report by experts monitoring UN sanctions against the regime.

The UN experts said in the report that they found new evidence of the North’s arms smuggling and illegal financial transactions.

The panel said that the evidence showed North Korea sold tanks, ballistic missiles and rocket-propelled grenades to Yemen’s Houthi insurgents and other entities via a Syrian arms smuggler.

The UN report said that North Korean arms experts had visited a munitions factory in Syria multiple times. It added that the North’s imports of petroleum products surged on the routes involving Russian and Chinese vessels.  [KBS World Radio]

Here is another example of free agency coming to international sports:

South Korea’s U.S. born basketball player, Ricardo Ratliffe, on Thursday rued a lack of team effort in his side’s disappointing loss against Iran at the 18th Asian Games.

South Korea lost its title defense bid after losing to Iran 80-68 in the men’s basketball semifinal match at the 18th Asian Games at Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Istora arena in Jakarta.

Ratliffe, whose Korean name is Ra Gun-ah, was the only South Korean player who stood up against Iranians. He had a game-high 37 points and 12 rebounds, but his superb performance wasn’t enough to see South Korea through to the final.

“We just played terrible,” Ratliffe said of his team’s performance. “We didn’t play well together. That’s all.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

That's because from what we can see so far, it looks like a really shitty deal — far worse than the Iran JCPOA, far worse than Agreed Frameworks I & II, almost sure to consolidate Kim Jong-un's domestic control, nuclear status & hegemony over South Korea. https://t.co/4qVpZlCYw7

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) June 17, 2018

President Trump is as expected getting bashed for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal with claims that it will impact his ability to negotiate with Kim Jong-un:

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is a major setback to US negotiating credibility and will complicate efforts to reach an agreement with Pyongyang over its own more advanced weapons programme, analysts say.

Trump is set to hold a much-anticipated and unprecedented summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the coming weeks to negotiate over Pyongyang’s arsenal, after it last year carried out by far its most powerful nuclear test to date and launched missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

But the US president Tuesday pulled Washington out of the 2015 accord with Teheran, pouring scorn on the “disastrous” agreement and describing it an “embarrassment” to the United States ― although European signatories and the IAEA say Iran has complied with its obligations.

Antony Blinken, who was deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama, said the White House move “makes getting to yes with North Korea that much more challenging”.

“Why would Kim … believe any commitments President Trump makes when he arbitrarily tears up an agreement with which the other party is complying?” he asked on Twitter.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it can be argued that if the Obama administration thought the Iran nuclear deal was so great why did they not try and lobby the Senate to consent to the treaty as the Constitution requires?  Consent from the Senate would have made it much harder for the President to withdraw from the treaty.  This is what I will be looking for if President Trump is able to strike a deal with the North Koreans; will he try to get consent from the Senate?

As far as impacts to negotiating with Kim Jong-un, I think it is arguable that Trump is sending a message that North Korea will need to agree to denuclearize or there will not be a deal.

This is something we need to see more of, financially going after the companies who supply the Kim regime with banned goods and technology:

The Donald Trump administration fined Chinese tech giant ZTE a record $1.19 billion Tuesday for selling American telecommunications equipment to Iran and North Korea, breaching sanctions.

Between January 2010 and last April, ZTE conspired to evade U.S. embargoes by obtaining contracts and sales with Iranian entities, including those affiliated with the Tehran government, said the U.S. Department of Commerce, earning it hundreds of millions of dollars.

ZTE, China’s second-largest maker of telecom equipment, is said to have bought American equipment and software and illegally shipped them to Iran, supporting building of large-scale telecommunications networks there.

In addition, ZTE was charged in connection with 283 shipments of telecommunications equipment to North Korea, with knowledge it violated U.S. Export Administration Regulations.

The civil and criminal penalty of a combined $1.19 billion is the largest fine levied by the United States in a sanctions case.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The missile that Iran recently test had some believing they may have tested North Korea’s Musudan missile.  According to one expert the test by Iran was not a Musudan they have had one successful flight test of, but likely an equivalent of North Korea’s No Dong missile that North Korea has a long history of successful flight tests with:

Chances are low that the ballistic missile recently test-fired by Iran could have been North Korea’s Musudan intermediate range ballistic missile, a defense expert said.

Iran launched the missile on Jan. 29, which flew about 1,000 kilometers. Media reports have since surfaced suggesting that the missile could be the same as North Korea’s Musudan missile, which, if confirmed, would mean missile cooperation between the two countries is still ongoing.

But Michael Elleman, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an article carried by the website 38 North that there is little possibility that the Iranians have tested the Musudan.

“If the Iranian missile were modeled on the 3,000 kilometer-range Musudan, it would be an intermediate-range ballistic missile, contrary to the U.S. description of the Khorramshahr as a medium-range ballistic missile,” Elleman said.

While the July 2016 and January 2017 test flights conducted by Iran were largely successful, North Korea’s tests of the Musudan failed soon after launch in six of eight attempts, a wide discrepancy that is difficult to explain even if Iran is more capable at missile development, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Navy skipper detained by Iran this January believes his deference prevented war. https://t.co/lP43n7erVQ

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) September 12, 2016