Tag: suez canal
Collaboration
From Reuters:
Two Israeli warships passed through Egypt’s Suez Canal on Tuesday heading to the Red Sea on a mission to stop arms smuggling to Palestinian-ruled Gaza, sources said.
A Suez Canal Authority source named the warships as the Eilat and Hanit and said the Hanit had passed through the canal twice in June.
“This is part of an Israeli effort to stop arms smuggling to Gaza,” a security source, who declined to be identified by name or nationality, told Reuters.
Disgraceful.
Israeli sub sails Suez, signaling reach to Iran
From Reuters:
An Israeli submarine sailed the Suez Canal to the Red Sea as part of a naval drill last month, defense sources said on Friday, describing the unusual maneuver as a show of strategic reach in the face of Iran.
Israel long kept its three Dolphin-class submarines, which are widely assumed to carry nuclear missiles, away from Suez so as not to expose them to the gaze of Egyptian harbormasters.
It was unclear when last month the vessel left the Mediterranean. One source said the voyage was planned for months and so was not related to unrest after the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the Israelis see as promoting the pursuit of nuclear weapons to threaten them.
Sailing to the Gulf without using Suez would oblige the diesel-fueled Israeli submarines, normally based in the Mediterranean, to circumnavigate Africa — a weeks-long voyage. That would have limited use in signaling Israel’s readiness to retaliate should it ever come under an Iranian nuclear attack.
Shorter-term, the submarines’ conventional missiles could also be deployed in any Israeli strikes on Iran’s atomic sites, which Tehran insists have only civilian energy purposes.
A defense source said the Israeli navy held an exercise off Eilat last month and that a Dolphin took part, having traveled to the Red Sea port though Suez. Israel has a naval base at Eilat, a 10-km (6-mile) strip of coast between Egypt and Jordan, but officials say it has no submarine dock there.
“This was definitely a departure from policy,” said the source, who declined to give further details on the drill or say whether the Dolphin had undergone Egyptian inspections in the canal, through which the submarine sailed unsubmerged.
A military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the voyage, first reported on Friday by the Jerusalem Post.
EGYPTIAN POSITION
Egyptian officials at Suez said they would neither confirm nor deny reports regarding military movements. One official said that if there was such a passage by Israelis in the canal, it would not be problematic as Egypt and Israel are not at war.
This comes as the Egyptian regime is beefing up its military, not to confront Israel, but to contain Iran!