The US aircraft carrier Nimitz yesterday moved into the Gulf with its battle group of six warships for operations near Iraq's volatile border with Iran. The carrier, armed with 50 fighters and more than 20 other fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, was rushed to the Gulf ahead of schedule after tension on the border increased.
The arrival of the battle group to reinforce the eight destroyers, frigates and other US warships already in the Gulf coincided with naval war-games launched by Iran on Saturday in northern Gulf waters. The war-games, held every year and planned before the Nim- itz hurried to the region, are intended to show Iran's ability to defend its security and interests, Iranian military chiefs have said.
"The entire battle group came through," a US Navy spokesman said after the 73,000-tonne Nimitz and its battle group of two cruisers, a destroyer, a frigate, a submarine and a support ship passed through the strategic Strait of Hormuz under cover of darkness.
A spokesman at the US navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said: "She will be operating in the Gulf as was planned all along as part of Operation Southern Watch." Various ships in the battle group would also be operating as part of the multinational maritime interception force checking shipping to and from Iraq and conducting operations and exercises with Gulf Arab and Western allied navies.
Southern Watch was set up in 1992, after the Gulf War, by the United States, Britain and France to patrol a "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq. Its purpose is to protect members of Iraq's Shia minority from President Saddam Hussein's airforce.
Two US swing-wing B-1 bombers staged mock strikes on the Kuwaiti side of the Iraqi border on Saturday.
"The exercise was a clear message to Iraq that the US was standing on the side of its allies in the region in regard of implementing international resolutions and enforcing the `no-fly zones' in Iraq," a US officer said. The arrival of the Nimitz enables the United States to spread responsibility for daily air patrols over southern Iraq, usually flown from air force bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states.
A similar zone in northern Iraq aimed at protecting Iraqi Kurds is patrolled by air from Turkey.
The Pentagon ordered the Nim- itz to hurry to the Gulf from the South China Sea when tension heightened over the border between Iran and Iraq, enemies in the eight-year war that ended in 1988 and involved the death of a million men.
The Pentagon order was in response to Iranian air raids on two Iraqi bases of the Mujahideen Khalq, an armed Iranian exile group opposed to Iran's Islamic revolutionary government.
The joint exercise by the Iranian navy and naval units of the Revolutionary Guard involves 100 vessels, including two Russian-made Kilo class diesel submarines and anti-submarine helicopters, Tehran radio said.
Manoeuvres included "acoustic deflection of torpedoes, mine-laying and mine-sweeping, firing modified air-to-surface missiles from helicopters, and firing dummy torpedoes", it said. Air force fighters provided air support, the radio added.
Iran's Defence Minister, RearAdmiral Ali Shamkhani, said last week he saw no reason for a clash with US forces. "From our side we do not see any reason for a confrontation. We are not sure about the intentions of the other side," he said.