Tag Archives: Container ship

Things Are Heating Up In The Middle East

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On January 1st, Breitbart reported that Iran is sending a warship to the Red Sea as a result of other nations sending ships there to protect shipping lanes from Houthi terrorists.

The article reports:

The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported Iran’s frigate Alborz, launched in 1969 on completion by Vickers in the UK, will fly the country’s flag across the key shipping lanes.

In its report, Tasnim did not specify the details of the Alborz’s mission but highlighted what it claimed were the regional implications of Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

“Following rising tensions in the Gaza war, there has been an acceleration in developments in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait,” it said, repeating words of action long pronounced by Tehran in its war with the west.

Note that the mission of the ship was not specified.

The article notes”

On Sunday, U.S. Navy helicopters sank three Houthi-operated vessels that had attacked a container ship in the Red Sea, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement, as Breitbart News reported.

The UK defense minister warned on Monday that London is “willing to take direct action” against the Houthis.

…Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have been targeting vessels in the Red Sea since November to show their support for the Palestinian Islamist terrorist group Hamas in its war with Israel.

In response, many major shipping companies have switched to longer and more costly routes which avoid the area altogether.

The civilized world can either fight back or it can simply accept the fact that terrorists are going to be in control of the Red Sea.,

Terrorism Impacts All Of Us

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This is a map of one of the most popular shipping routes in the Middle East:

Ships come through the Suez Canal, into the Red Sea, and eventually make their way to the Indian Ocean. One of the major shipping lines to use this route is A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S.

On Friday, Townhall reported the following:

“Container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S instructed its vessels heading for the southern entrance of the Red Sea to pause their voyages after one of its carriers came under attack. The move threatens to undermine the global economic recovery and adds to pressure on the US to improve security along one of the worlds most important trade routes,” Bloomberg reports. “Disruptions in the area can snarl supply chains and world trade. Back in 2021, the grounding of the Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week, throwing ships off schedule for months and tightening the available of cargo space. That accident was estimated to have cut capacity by 20% to 30% for several weeks.” 

The move comes after a Maersk ship was attacked by drones over the past 24 hours.

The article concludes:

Since October 7, when Hamas launched a brutal terrorist attack on civilians in Israel, the Houthis have been attacking ships and launching missiles at Israeli and U.S. targets. Many have been intercepted by U.S. military ships currently stationed in the region. 

In 2021, the Biden administration delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization. 

By order of the President and as a direct result of a nearly 3-year policy of appeasing Iran and its proxies, the United States today utterly failed in a core mission of upholding freedom of navigation. The magnitude of the moment should not be understated. Beijing is watching.

— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) December 15, 2023

 

The boldness of the Houthis is a direct result of the Biden administration’s desperate attempt to broker a nuclear deal with Iran. They don’t want to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon–they just want to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon while the Democrats are still in power. As soon as they get out of town, they really don’t care.

Please vote this administration out of office in November.

More Questions Than Answers

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On Saturday, CBS News reported the collision of the USS Fitzgerald and the ACX Crystal, a large container ship. Unfortunately, seven sailors were killed in the collision.

CBS News reported:

The Fitzgerald was struck by the Philippine-registered container ship ACX Crystal. The Philippine ship is 29,060 tons and 730 long, the coast guard said, much larger than the 8,315-ton naval destroyer. Aerial television news footage showed its bow on the left side was dented and scraped, but it did not appear to have suffered any major structural damage.

…The Fitzgerald, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer commissioned in 1995, is based in Yokosuka, according to the Navy. Its crew typically includes 23 officers, 24 chief petty officers and 291 enlisted sailors.   

Not so fast. There seem to be some questions surrounding the incident. Thomas Lifson has posted two articles in The American Thinker–one yesterday and one today–that raise some questions as to what actually happened. For the sake of keeping related information together, I am going to combine facts from the two articles.

Thomas Lifson observes:

We received an email from a Navy Mother that raises serious questions. We will redact her name, while the rumors (and that’s how they must be categorized for now) reported by her son aboard the Fitzgerald are checked out. Here is what she wrote to us:

My son is assigned to the USS Fitzgerald. I am unable to share his rate with you.

The information is short and not so sweet. The implications are disturbing.

The ship is registered in the Philippines. We do not know who the owner is. The container ship neither had its running lights or transponder on. That is an action taken willfully. Furthermore, for the container ship to strike with such accuracy is troublesome. Given what some have done with cars in Europe, what a feather in the cap it would be to sink a U.S. Navy warship. Think on that.

My son missed being washed out to sea by the blink of an eye. He was on his way to one of the berthing areas that was rammed.

Yes, language is important. “Rammed” is the perfect word.

Loving and Concerned Navy Mother

If there is any substance to this – that the ACX Crystal disabled protective systems and rammed the Fitzgerald at high speed aimed at crtical facilities (evident from the damage)

…we have to consider the possibility of an asymmetric warfare attack designed to disable missile defense of a carrier strike group, as North Korea demonstrates the ability to make exactly such attacks on a multibillion dollar warship carrying thousands of sailors.

The American Thinker also quotes a report by the Associated Press:

Japan‘s coast guard is investigating why it took nearly an hour for a deadly collision between a U.S. Navy destroyer and a container ship to be reported.

A coast guard official said Monday they are trying to find out what the crew of the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal was doing before reporting the collision to authorities 50 minutes later.

There may be a very obvious explanation of the reporting of this incident. If the incident is in fact a ramming, rather than a collision, it requires a response. The first thing to find out is who owns the ACX Crystal and who was controlling the helm at the time of the incident. At that point, the Trump Administration has a choice–they can either roll over and play dead as the past administration did when something like this happened or they can respond with force. It is my hope that if this is proven to be no accident, the Trump Administration will respond with enough force to let whoever did this know that doing it again is a really bad idea. I don’t want to see the government overreact, but if this was not an accident, I do want to see our government react with strength.

While We Are Preparing To Sign A Nuclear Arms Treaty…

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Yahoo News is reporting today that Iran has seized the Maersk Tigris cargo ship in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday the U.K. Telegraph carried the story.

The Telegraph reports:

The vessel had apparently declined to change course and steer towards the Iranian coast. Warning shots were then fired across the bridge and the ship was boarded by personnel from the naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and steered towards the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

The container ship was travelling from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai. It was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands and chartered by Rickmers Ship Management, a company based in Hamburg. The vessel is owned by Maersk, the Danish shipping and trading conglomerate.

…Fars, the semi-official Iranian news agency, described the ship as a “trade vessel” which had been “seized by the Iranian navy” at the request of the country’s Ports and Maritime Authority.

Fars added: “The ship was seized after a relevant court order was issued for its confiscation.” No further explanation for Iran’s actions was offered.

The idea of simply seizing the ship and the innocent people aboard the ship does not seem like the appropriate response to the court action.

Meanwhile, Yahoo News reports:

Iran’s foreign minister told a New York City audience on Wednesday that Tehran respects freedom of navigation in the Gulf, a day after Iranian patrol boats seized a Danish container ship in one of the world’s busiest oil shipping lanes.

“The Persian Gulf is our lifeline … We will respect international navigation,” Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said during a discussion hosted by New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and the think tank New America. “For us, freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf is a must.”

This doesn’t sound like freedom of navigation.

Yahoo News reports:

Maersk said in a statement that it was in communication with the Danish Foreign Ministry and trying to ascertain why the Maersk Tigris had been diverted.

Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization said a court had ordered the ship seized after ruling against Maersk Line in a case about debts brought by Pars Talaie, an Iranian company.

Zarif told the audience on Wednesday that Maersk was required to pay damages on the basis of a court order. He said the legal proceedings had been going on for some 14 years.

“Simply, our naval forces implemented the decision of the court,” Zarif said in New York, characterizing Maersk’s actions as “peculiar.”

Tasnim, an Iranian news agency, quoted a Pars Talaie lawyer as saying the debt involved a cargo that Pars Talaie had hired Maersk to take from the Iranian port of Abadan to Dubai more than a decade ago but which never arrived.

This is another example of what happens when America has a weak President. There were American warships in the area, but Iran had no reason to fear them. This is also an example of the lawlessness of Iran.