Iran, Syria, and sanctions-busting fakery

Inevitably, Iran and Syria are gaming international maritime communications.  Both nations are under sanctions.  Both appear to be faking registry in Tanzania.  And Iran is transmitting false signals to hide the operations of Syrian cargo ships.

The fakery by the two countries’ merchant fleets has Tanzania in common – apparently as a victim – but it also has Libya.  Twenty years of peace dividends for the West, combined with the Arab Spring of 2011, have changed the security picture on Africa’s perimeter, and the direction in some segments of it is backward, to an age of little surveillance and expanding lawlessness.  Libya’s coast is one such segment.  Even if the surveillance forces of NATO are watching in the central Mediterranean, it’s not clear that the focus is there to ensure useful intelligence collection, or that there’s an organized will to do much about tankers or cargo vessels that head, on the sly, into and out of Libya.

And so, this fall, Iranian ships have been transmitting fake signals

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Pulling out of Benghazi: These colors run scared

Remember the slogan “These colors don’t run,” captioning the American flag?

Neither does al Qaeda.

Why should they?  They’ve just won.  They have forced us out of Benghazi.  It did take multiple attacks over several months, and the gruesome torture and murder of our ambassador, to edge us out.  But the job is done now.  We’re running scared.

Instead of sticking with our commitment to a new Libya, one in which Americans have friendship and influence – one in which we can walk free, and so can Libyans – we have closed our post in Benghazi and

Awesome news: Iran to deploy naval task force to the Atlantic Ocean

It is one of Dyer’s Axioms that a nation doesn’t change its naval posture because it is content with the status quo.  Iran continues to validate the axiom, and the latest announcement from her busy naval leadership is that the Islamic Republic will deploy a naval task force to the Atlantic in the near future as “part of a program to ply international waters.”

The development is not surprising, considering that Iran has maintained an antipiracy task force presence off Somalia for nearly three years now, sent a two-ship task force on an expedition to Syria earlier this year, and announced the deployment of a submarine to the Red Sea in June.

Granted,