U.S. Plans $7 Billion Missile-Defense Sale To UAE
A little LBA Background on this situation….
Iran & The UAE have been getting into some rather “Heated Arguments” lately concerning a little Island known as Abu Musa. You see, the Island (land) actually belongs to the UAE and Iran claims no, it belongs to Iran due to GB’s handover in 1971. So, Iran being the little “Napoleon” especially with the backing of Russia, just took the Island as theirs…
The Island of Abu Musa’s Location
The Island is situated at the mouth of the narrows of the Strait of Hormuz. Tell me class, what strategic position could this mean for Iran to build a military base there? Also, keep in mind the media is calling their military base, offices for “Marine Life Rescue” and a registration office for ships and sailors. Im surprised their not building baby formula plants there….
Also, up to 40 percent of the world’s oil supply passes through the area.
How many offices would you need to build on an island of less then 600 people?
See my earlier report here..
Iran Builds Marine Offices On Disputed Island: Iran Plan To Block Strait Of Hormuz?
UAE has filed a complaint with the UN in conjunction with the six Gulf Cooperation Council condeming Iran for their actions.
See here: Iran’s island offices condemned
Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands are controlled by Iran but claimed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with broad Arab support.
Now knowing how the UN is with everything, (Slack asses that they are), it looks like the UAE is seeking assistance from the USA.
September 8, 2008
Reuters
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is planning to sell the United Arab Emirates an advanced U.S. missile defense system valued at up to $7 billion that could be used to defend against Iran, people who have attended briefings on the matter said on Monday.
The Pentagon is set to notify the U.S. Congress of the proposed sale, which would be the first of the so-called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, several people familiar with the matter said.
THAAD is built by Lockheed Martin Corp
Once notified of such a proposed arms sale by the administration, Congress has 30 days to review it but almost never blocks.
In any case, deployment of the THAAD weapons system is “at least months away” and could take more than a year, said a congressional staff member familiar with the matter.
Kenneth Katzman, an expert on the Gulf at the Congressional Research Service, said the UAE has been eager for a “sophisticated antidote” to Iran’s missile capabilities.
“The UAE has been concerned for many years about possible retaliation against it for U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” he said.
For Iran, Katzman added, UAE could be an attractive target because of its billions of dollars of infrastructure investments.
Craig Vanbebber, a Lockheed Martin spokesman, said several countries had shown interest in buying the THAAD system, “with its significant coverage area and tremendous success in recent testing.”
THAAD is the first missile defense system designed to defend against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles both inside and outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
The potential $7 billion sale would include anti-missile interceptors, firing units, associated radar sites and training, among other things, a congressional staff member said.
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They know an American missile defense system, is better than a Russian system.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pmFIX BAYONETS!
September 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pmFIX BAYONETS!
______________________________
You’ve got it! SNAP!
September 8th, 2008 at 7:54 pmSo we’re selling advanced missile systems to Arab countries? believe im all for protecting our friends and the worlds oil supply. but isnt there a better way to protect them other than selling away our secrets? couldnt we just put them there and let Americans man them. its really nothing personal towards the UAE. as far as i know they have always been a friend but i have become pretty cynical these days admitedly
September 8th, 2008 at 8:05 pmAswell as these 3 islands, Iran also claims and regularly threatens Bahrain, which is a sovereign state.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:34 pmI have been to all these places.
When we see in the media/web regarding Iran flexing its muscles in the region - it is real, very real and should not be ignored.
Your not the one.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:46 pmMeant to say your not the only one (being cynical on these clowns)
September 8th, 2008 at 10:08 pmYour fears are quite reasonable, but let me assure you that should we ever have to fight the UAE (or any of our other allies, for that matter), we’ll have one advantage they won’t ever be able to achieve: the American fighting man.
It is also true that practically every fighting system we sell to friendly nations, is not the same top-notch gear that we use; there are certain compromises made. Think of the F-15J, F-16I, etc.
The Arabs also lack the high-tech, and massive defense industries we have. If you look at virtually all their hardware, you see the vast majority of it is imported. Were they to fight us, or one of the other Western nations, they immediately lose that flow of weapons.
Oil is their only viable weapon.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:10 pmThe picture looks like Hawks…
I know thats not what they are going for.
I would remind everybody that we have made some pretty strong moves to “harden” our equipment so that is not so easy to reverse engineer. We learned from the F-14 bit with Iran.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:49 pmThe only countries that might have a chance of getting their heads around our tech are either already our allies or are enemies of the UAE so all we would have to do is keep an eye on it so nothing goes on a “world tour”.
You can bet that part of the contract will be providing all techincal assistance and technicians from our own industry.
Letting the Dubai ports deal go through was probably, as I look back on it, as much an attempt to get us into their opperations as anything else. I also think that creating a dependance on us and our assitance is likely to pay off in some level of loyalty from them to us in the future.
Kurt, you need to wake up to the reality that Arab countries do operate American Weapon systems.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are one of the few countries that operate the Abrams as its main battle tank.
In addition to that, Egypt and the U.A.E. have one of the world’s largest F-16 collections.
I think I forgot to mention that Saudi’s are also in the list of the few countries that fly F-15s.
So yeah, get real. In the end, it creates nothing but American jobs.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:19 am