Giant Mine Ex by Iran has Nothing to Do With Iran…..We promise

Officially, despite rising tensions with Tehran, the enemy in in the international naval wargames that kicked off in the Gulf this week is not, repeat not, Iran: It’s radical environmentalists. Very, very well-armed environmentalists.

Against this fictional Greenpeace gone rogue are set the ships, aircraft, and divers from more than 20 nations, including an unprecedented concentration of Navy minesweepers, eight of which are now in the Gulf — a surge the Navy told AOL Defense it cannot sustain long into 2013.

Navy Diver 2nd Class Devon Headley, assigned to Mobile Diving Salvage Unit TWO (MDSU-2), removes the transducer head from a sonar buoy during dive operations. MDSU-2 is deployed with CTG 56.1, which provides mine counter-measure, explosive ordnance disposal, salvage-diving, counter-terrorism, and force protection for the U.S. 5th Fleet. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shane Tuck/Released)

“The scenario is that it’s an environmentally focused group that has been known to employ violence,” said Rear Adm. Kenneth Perry, the vice-chief of the Naval Mine & Anti-Submarine Warfare Command (NMAWC), who’s come out to Bahrain to oversee the International Mine Counter-Measures Exercise (IMCMEX), “and they have the resourcing, the visibility, the access to procure either on the grey market or the black market ‘improvised underwater explosives,’ or mines.”

“It’s not about Iran,” said a somewhat weary Navy spokesman in a follow-up call.

The simulated mines will include not just home-made devices but some of the “more advanced types” on the global market, Perry explained, similar to the Italian MANTA mines featured, incidentally, in the Iranian arsenal. The goal is to test the participating forces to the fullest, rather than be limited by what a non-state organization might realistically be expected to acquire.

‘Greenpeace terrorists mining the Gulf’. Uh-huh. Somebody at the Pentagon has a sense of humor

Damn treehuggers!