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Home / World

Amid US tension, Iran builds fake aircraft carrier to attack

By Jon Gambrell
Other·
9 Jun, 2020 10:05 PM4 mins to read

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A satellite photo provided by Maxar Technologies shows a fake aircraft carrier off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran. Photo / AP

A satellite photo provided by Maxar Technologies shows a fake aircraft carrier off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran. Photo / AP

As tensions remain high between Iran and the US, the Islamic Republic appears to have constructed a new mock-up of an aircraft carrier off its southern coast for potential live-fire drills.

The faux foe, seen in satellite photographs obtained by AP, resembles the Nimitz-class carriers that the US Navy routinely sails into the Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz, its narrow mouth where 20 per cent of all the world's oil passes through.

While not yet acknowledged by Iranian officials, the replica's appearance in the port city of Bandar Abbas suggests Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is preparing an encore of a similar mock-sinking it conducted in 2015.

It also comes as Iran announced today that it will execute a man it accused of sharing details on the movements of the Guard's General Qassem Soleimani, whom the US killed in a January drone strike in Baghdad.

The replica carries 16 mock-ups of fighter jets on its deck, according to satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies. The vessel appears to be some 200m-long and 50m-wide. A real Nimitz is over 300m-long and 75m-wide.

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Pursue Iran in international court over shootdown of Ukrainian airliner, victims’ family spokesman says https://t.co/1GBdS1v9gH pic.twitter.com/EVioZn9CIB

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) June 9, 2020

The fake carrier sits just a short distance away from the parking lot in which the Guard unveiled over 100 new speedboats in May, the kind it routinely employs in tense encounters between Iranian sailors and the US Navy. Those boats carry both mounted machine guns and missiles.

The mock-up, which first began to be noticed among defence and intelligence analysts in January, strongly resembles a similar one used in February 2015 during a military exercise called "Great Prophet 9." During that drill, Iran swarmed the fake aircraft carrier with speedboats firing machine guns and rockets. Surface-to-sea missiles later targeted and destroyed the fake carrier.

"American aircraft carriers are very big ammunition depots housing a lot of missiles, rockets, torpedoes and everything else," the Guard's then-navy chief, Admiral Ali Fadavi, said on state television at the time.

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That drill, however, came as Iran and world powers remained locked in negotiations over Tehran's nuclear programme. Today, the deal born of those negotiations is in tatters.

US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in May 2018. Iran later responded by slowly abandoning nearly every tenant of the agreement, though it still allows UN inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

Last year saw a series of attacks and incidents further ramp up tensions between Iran and the US. They reached a crescendo with the January 3 strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Soleimani, head of the Guard's expeditionary Quds, or Jerusalem, Force.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said Iranian citizen Mahmoud Mousavi Majd had been convicted in a Revolutionary Court, which handles security cases behind closed doors. Esmaili accused Majd of receiving money for allegedly sharing security information on the Guard and the Quds Force, as well as the "positions and movement routes" of Soleimani.

Republicans set to introduce biggest-ever sanctions bill against Iran https://t.co/6yFcyMuJT2

— The National (@TheNationalUAE) June 9, 2020

Majd was "linked to the CIA and the Mossad," the Israeli intelligence agency, Esmaili alleged, without providing evidence. Both the CIA and the Israeli prime minister's office, which oversees the Mossad, declined to comment.

Later, the judiciary said Majd was detained in October 2018 and sentenced to death in September 2019, before Soleimani's killing.

Iran's announcement of the looming execution shows how seriously they still take Soleimani's assassination.

An exercise targeting a mock US aircraft carrier could send that message as well, particularly if it involves a swarm attack of smaller vessels, which analysts believe Iran would employ if it did get into a shooting war with the US Navy.

The US Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, which patrols Mideast waters, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

- AP

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