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They say if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk.
It appears that axiom holds true in geopolitics, if the cookie is the time, space and freedom to build a nuclear bomb, and the glass of milk is maritime domination of the Western Hemisphere.
After negotiating a deal with the U.S. that could best be construed as the first step in building a lasting peace in the Middle East or at worse a paved roadway to a nuclear attack on Israel (there’s a lot of disagreement on this one!), Iran announced it will send a fleet of warships to the Atlantic.
Perhaps it’s a show of force toward Congress, who is resoundingly against the deal. Or it’s an attempt to reassert naval superiority after having lost control of the Persian Gulf to the United States. Shit maybe they just like a good sail.
No one really knows. Iran didn’t give a reason, just saying that it was heading East. From the Times of Israel:
Iran intends to dispatch “a fleet of warships” to the Atlantic Ocean shortly, the semi-state Fars news agency reported Thursday, quoting the regime’s navy chief.
“Our warships will soon berth at ports in the Atlantic Ocean,” Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari promised at a ceremony on Wednesday marking the return to port of Iranian warships that Fars said had taken part in joint drills with the Russian navy.
Sayyari said the Iranian vessels had been in the Caspian Sea and at the Russian port of Astrakhan. “The presence of Iranian warships in international ports shows the Iranian Navy’s prowess,” Fars quoted him saying.
This is (almost certainly) no big deal, but anyway, keep your head up on your next sail, Bros. You could accidentally become a hostage of the Iranian state.