BAGHDAD, 23 December 2006 — An increased US naval presence in the Gulf is not a response to any action by Iran but a message to all countries that the United States will keep its regional footprint “for a long time,” US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday.
CBS News reported Monday that a projected naval buildup was intended to discourage what US officials view as increasingly provocative acts by Tehran pressing for a nuclear program and support for Shiite militias in Iraq.
“I don’t think it’s a response to anything anyone else has done,” Gates told reporters during a three-day visit to Iraq.
“I think the message that we are sending to everyone, not just Iran, is that the United States is an enduring presence in this part of the world. We have been here for a long time. We will be here for a long time and everybody needs to remember that — both our friends and those who might consider themselves our adversaries,” he said.
The US command responsible for Middle East operations has asked the Pentagon to add a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region as a warning to Syria and Iran and to help it carry out other operations, according to a senior defense official. The war-fighting Central Command wants the carrier strike group and its warplanes by end-March for “deterrence” and to increase “flexibility,” including for potential noncombat operations, said the official who asked not be to be named.
Gates yesterday acknowledged the increased US presence in the Gulf. “There has been an increase in naval strength in the Gulf in the past several weeks,” he said.
But the new defense secretary, who replaced Donald Rumsfeld on Monday, said he did not know if the United States would send another carrier to the Gulf.
Gates also said that the United States and the Iraqi government were in “broad strategic agreement” on how to bring security to Baghdad, and that their generals would work up a specific plan. Winding up a three-day visit for a first-hand assessment of the situation, Gates said he would report to President George W. Bush as early as this weekend on his findings and impressions.
British troops backed by tanks yesterday seized a leader of a rogue Iraqi police unit suspected of being behind the killing of 17 people in an ambush near the southern city of Basra, the British military said.
Some 800 troops launched a predawn raid on a house in a southern district of Basra and captured seven people, including a “significant” member of Basra’s police Serious Crimes Unit, British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said.
No shots were fired in the operation and there were no casualties, he added.
Burbridge said the officer was suspected of links to an incident in October, when gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying police translators, trainers and cleaning workers from a police academy to Basra. At the time, a police source said the gunmen shot their victims in the head and the chest and dumped the bodies around Basra.
