Iran Shipping Terrorist Weapons Through Civilian Ports
The international community has the ability to take steps against shipments originating from Iran. They have yet to act.
One aspect of the Israeli Navy’s intercept of 500 tons of military ordinance bound for Hezbollah is the disturbing fact that massive shipments of undeclared weapons are still regularly smuggled through civilian ports in a post-9/11 world.
On the night of November 3, the Israeli Navy asked for and received permission from the captain to board and investigate cargo on the Francop, an Antiguan-flagged ship. On that ship they found 500 tons of ammunition, artillery shells, rockets, and explosives.
Among the munitions captured by the Israeli Navy were Iranian 107mm rockets nearly identical to those captured near a U.S. forward operating base in Iraq in 2007. Sources presently in Iraq claim that these rockets are still in constant use against American troops and have killed and wounded U.S. soldiers in their bases as recently as several weeks ago.
How did the Francop come to be carrying 36 containers filled with hidden weapons of war? Israeli Foreign Ministry Director General Yossi Gal led a briefing on November 5 that went largely ignored by the media, a briefing that tracked this deadly shipment from its origins until its capture.
The shipment originated in Iran aboard the Visea, a ship owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL). The Visea left the port city of Bandar Abbas with its shipment of weapons in the beginning of October. It was unloaded on October 26 by unsuspecting dock workers in the Egyptian port city of Damietta. The cargo was transferred to the Francop, where it was listed on the manifest as more than 24,000 bags of polyethylene plastic. It was intercepted a week later.
Like the captain and crew of the Francop, Egypt is a victim of Iran’s efforts to arm terrorists. Because the cargo was poorly secured in commercial shipping containers with only the flimsy cover of bags of plastic, there was no way Egyptian port workers knew that they were handling hundreds of tons of high explosives, rocket propellants, fuses, and ammunition. And such a potentially deadly scenario could occur in almost any nation, including our own.
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6 Comments
1. Libertyship46:We can learn a few things from this recent incident with the Israeli Navy. First, the Israeli Navy has some stunning intelligence-gathering capabilities. I just wish our CIA was as good and as effective as the Mossad, especially when it comes to gathering information in the Middle East. Second, if nobody believes it by now, you can certainly see that UN resolutions are meaningless and are easily broken, just like they were with the “Oil for Food” program with Iraq. It would be interesting to see if anyone at the UN was paid to look the other way as these shipments were made. That was the case with the Oil for Food program, I don’t see why the Iranians didn’t pay some UN officials to not make a stink about this. Third, the US, NATO, and the Israeli Navies have enough ships to blockade both Lebanon and Syria if they wanted to, searching all merchant ships bound for those countries for weapons. We should keep the blockade in effect until we slow the flow of arms into Lebanon and Syria to a trickle and those countries get the message that it’s not a smart idea to keep arming Hezbollah. Syria and Lebanon may protest, but there isn’t much they can do to stop a united naval blockade and they certainly won’t start a land war when they know they were wrong to smuggle arms to Hezbollah in the first place. But the fourth and major problem we should keep an eye on is that this incident shows how easy it would be to smuggle weapons, or a nuclear device, into this country via a container ship. This problem was widely discussed during the last election and only seems to become popular during elections. Once the election is over, then we tend to ignore this problem. My fellow Americans, it is insanity to ignore this problem any longer. Once day a major bomb or nuclear device will be smuggled in by ship into this country and then it will be too late. Act now to protect our ports, or we will certainly regret it later.
Nov 12, 2009 - 6:18 am 2. Bilgeman:I’ve sailed containerships, and I’ve got some bad news for you.
You can’t stop terrorist weapons being smuggled at sea any more than you can stop drugs being smuggled that way.
The Israelis intercepted a shipment that had been trans-shipped only once, (and I’ve been to Damietta, it’s not Rotterdam or Houston in terms of volume of cargo).
If they route their cargo through two or three trans-shipment points, it will become all but untraceable.
If you want to stop this trade, we must either destroy the supplier or destroy the customer. As long as the producer and the consumer exist, they WILL dope out a way to enact a transaction.
I’m sorry, but it’s just a matter of time. We take them out, or they’ll take us out.
Nov 12, 2009 - 6:44 am 3. Phranc:If the UN and the world had balls they would stop and search every cargo ship leaving Iran. But Iran knows they don’t. That is why they play the world “leaders” like suckers and strive undeterred and unimpeded on their way to nuclear weapons and at the same time ship arms to terrorists whos sole goal is to destroy Jews. But much of the UN has the same level of hate against Jews so their is little want to stop that.
Nov 12, 2009 - 8:56 am 4. TR Otter:This is really easy, just SINK EVERY cargo ship leaving an Iranian port. It will not take long for shipping companies to stop contracting with Iran. However, highly unlikely to be done with O as POTUS. But I am sure the Israelis would have no problem with this idea.
Nov 12, 2009 - 1:25 pm 5. john from cinncinatti:issue a letter of mark and let privateers do the job. couldn’t we hire some Somalians for the job? they know the neighborhood and they have experience.
Nov 12, 2009 - 9:39 pm 6. John "birther" Samford:Excuse me? You want action from the people that can’t even agree what a terrorist is?
As I type, the US Navy is using the traditional 12 Mile limit on national sea control zone.
LOST (Law Of the Seas Treaty) changes that limit to 271 miles. The Pirates have filed in the UN to prevent the US Navy from operating against pirates within that 271 mile limit. The State Department is siding with the UN.
The USA is prevented by treaty from taking action against the pirates, as a matter of fact , any action against the ships carring arms to terrorists is an act of piracy.
Nov 13, 2009 - 9:32 amYou guys need to put down the koolaid.
The ONLY way around this issue is to withdraw from several international treaties, first and foremost being the UN Charter. Ain’t gonna happen.