Iran given a message from the Pentagon

A FULLER VERSION OF MY TIMES STORY YESTERDAY: An American submarine armed with 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles was ordered to surface in the Gulf waterway to give Iran the strongest warning of intent as tensions with Tehran remained at a critical level. To emphasise the threat posed by the presence of USS Georgia, an Ohio-class submarine, the US Navy made available a photograph of the boat as it transited through the narrow Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf in the company of USS Port Royal, a guided-missile cruiser. It was the first time an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine had been seen in the strategic waterway for eight years, underlining the perceived raised threat posed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The 18,750-tonne nuclear-powered Ohio-class submarine, the biggest in the US Navy, was built to be part of the US nuclear triad deterrent, each carrying 24 Trident 11 ballistic missiles. However, four of the 18 deterrent submarines were converted into Tomahawk-armed boats to provide a potent conventional weapon platform. The visible arrival in the Gulf waterway of USS Georgia, one of the four converted submarines, was the clearest sign that Washington is concerned Tehran is plotting retaliatory strikes following the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Novembe. Iran blamed Israel for the hit and vowed revenge. Normally the Pentagon makes no public comment about the whereabouts of its submarine fleet. The last time one of the four Ohio-class guided-missile boats made an appearance was in 2017 when USS Michigan was spotted in South Korea’s port of Busan as tensions rose between the US and North Korea. Apart from carrying 154 1,000-mile range Tomahawks, the converted Ohio-class boats also have space for special operations forces equipped with mini-submarines. Each of the four submarines have additional intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance roles. The arrival of USS Georgia coincided with a rocket attack by Iranian-backed militias on the Green Zone in Baghdad where the US embassy is located. One person was killed. Recent satellite pictures have also shown that Iran has begun new construction at its underground Fordow uranium-enrichment plant, 20 miles north east of the city of Qom. The combination of factors persuaded the Pentagon to upgrade the deterrent firepower in the Gulf region. Last month the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was sent to the North Arabian Sea as back-up while US troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan were carried out. The carrier is now off Somalia to support US troop withdrawals from there.