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US aircraft carrier has no plans to “intimidate Iran”
ON BOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS, off the coast of Pakistan - To the deafening roar of war planes taking off from the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, US military commanders insist that intimidating Iran is not part of their mission in the region. The carrier and its battle group has been in the Gulf of Oman since February 19, anchored about 120 nautical miles off the coast of Pakistan, in what the US Navy says is a mission to provide support for ground forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I doubt they're actually 'anchored'.
The Stennis has joined the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the area, fuelling speculation that Washington could be preparing for a military strike against arch-foe Iran over its controversial nuclear programme.

But the carrier’s commanding officer Captain Bradley E. Johanson said the vessel was in the region to reassure Washington’s key oil-rich Arab allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council. “We have received very explicit guidance that we will not assume any sort of escalatory posture with Iran,” Johanson told AFP as an F/A-18F Super Hornet took off heading north in the direction of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Nope, our F-18s don't intimidate anyone. Why, I gave each plane a specific order not to do any intimidating out there," he added.
“No sort of escalatory posture at all with Iran,” Johanson reiterated. “Our mission is not to go and intimidate Iran. Our mission is to go and make the GCC partner-nations comfortable with the security situation.”

However, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in January that reinforcing the US naval presence in the oil-rich region was a message to Iran, which has defied the international community over its nuclear drive. “The nice thing about my position is I don’t have to explain what the Secretary of Defence said,” said Rear Admiral Kevin M. Quinn, commander of Carrier Strike Group Three, formed by the Stennis and its battle group. “There was no word in my tasking to come over here that had anything to do with Iran,” he told AFP.
Nor did there need to be any.

Posted by: Steve White 2007-02-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=181560