A $15 billion threat dressed up as Deterrence, A Sitting Duck
The Strait of Hormuz: A kill box Washington cannot see into….
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire
While diplomats talk, the Iranian Ghadir submarines are already on the move. The USS Abraham Lincoln floats twenty miles off the Iranian coast, a $15 billion threat dressed up as deterrence, while twenty mini-submarines slip into the shallow waters below, turning the Strait of Hormuz into a kill box Washington cannot see into. The reality is that you cannot negotiate peace with a gun to the head, nor de-escalate while preparing “weeks-long operations” against a nation that has already learned to fight invisible wars. The talks are in the theatre, but the torpedoes are real.
The first thing you notice about the Persian Gulf is how small it feels. This is not the open ocean. It is a bathtub. A narrow, hot, shallow bathtub where the horizon presses in on all sides and the world’s most lethal warships must thread a needle barely ninety miles wide at its choke point. It is here, in these claustrophobic waters, that the USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier strike group have arrived as part of what analysts describe as one of the largest American military buildups in the region in years. Its flight deck stretches four and a half acres, and its strike group bristles with enough firepower to level small nations. And somewhere beneath the hull, in the acoustic confusion of shipping lanes and the restless sediment of the seabed, Iranian forces have reportedly deployed more than twenty Ghadir-class midget submarines, vessels that, according to open-source assessments, are practising the art of going completely still.
IMAGE: Iran’s Ghadir-class midget submarines, tiny diesel-electric boats built for the Persian Gulf’s shallow, noisy waters, can ambush with torpedoes, mines, and possibly sub-launched anti-ship missiles, forcing U.S. carrier strike groups to slow down, widen standoff distances, and spend heavily on anti-submarine warfare just to operate safely near Iran (Source: Irna)
The ghosts here are not new. In 1988, the cruiser USS Vincennes was patrolling these same waters when it shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children. The ship’s captain received a medal. The United States expressed “deep regret” and later agreed to financial compensation, but never issued a formal apology—an event that remains seared into Iranian national memory and that Iranian state media frequently references as evidence of American impunity in these waters.
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