“The U.S. government privately warned Iran that the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack before bombings in Kerman earlier this month that killed 95 people, a U.S. official said Thursday.
The official, who was not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. was following its longstanding policy of a “duty to warn” other governments against potential lethal threats.
The official did not detail how the U.S., which does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, conveyed the warning about its intelligence on ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, but noted that government officials “provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”
Iranian state media did not acknowledge the U.S. giving Tehran the information, and Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Jan. 3 attack on Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran. The dual suicide bombing killed at least 95 people and wounded dozens of others attending a commemoration for the late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, who had been killed in a 2020 U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
In the time since, Iran has been trying to blame the U.S. and Israel for the attack amid Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It has launched missile attacks on Iraq and Syria. It then launched strikes on nuclear-armed Pakistan, which responded with its own strikes on Iran, further raising tensions in a region inflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.”
“The US Navy has surged warships into the Middle East in response to the growing threat that Yemen’s Houthi rebels pose to commercial shipping passing through regional waters.
But there’s one ship type the American fleet isn’t surging into the region. The troubled Littoral Combat Ship. Farcically, the LCS is one of the more numerous ship types in the fleet. But it’s totally unsuitable for hard fighting. And the fighting around Yemen has been very hard.
That the US Navy has left behind its 26 LCSs is the latest humiliation for military leaders who advocated for the ship during its long development – and the latest reminder that the American fleet is, in practice, much smaller than it appears to be on paper.
If the LCSs can’t fight the Houthis, who can they fight? That likely answer is: no one.”
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“The idea was to equip the US fleet with 50 or more vessels that could sail fast in shallow, near-shore littorals. To keep them small, their weaponry would be light.
The Pentagon’s $37-billion commitment to the LCS was a profound misreading of the future security environment. With no long-range air-defenses, the 3,000-ton LCSs can’t protect themselves from the Houthis’ Iranian-made missiles and drones – to say nothing of protecting commercial ships that might be spread out across thousands of square miles.
And with no long-range land-attack weapons, the LCSs can’t strike back at the Houthis, either. If the LCSs are unsuitable for defense and offense against a regional militant group, how would they fare against a much bigger and more sophisticated foe like China?”
“One need not agree with those students’ slogans, their tactics, or their goals to recognize that provocative political speech is protected by the First Amendment. Republican political figures who have spent years railing against censorship and cancel culture would do well to remember that.”
“Over 200 packages of illegal weapons and military components bound for Yemen have been seized by the US Coast Guard, the US Central Command said in a statement on Thursday.
The shipment was seized from a vessel in the Arabian Sea on January 28, per the statement. The US Central Command said the weapons had originated in Iran and were en-route to be delivered to Houthi rebels in Yemen.
A vast assortment of weapons were found on the vessel, ranging from medium-range ballistic missile components, explosives, and anti-tank guided missile launcher assemblies.
“This is yet another example of Iran’s malign activity in the region, ” Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM commander, said in the statement.”
““Obviously, in some ways, deterrence has improved, because we have seen reduced attacks, but actually that’s only happened because we’ve degraded their capabilities — there will be more strikes, I’m almost certain of that,” Kearns said.”
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“The US is now attacking in real-time as militants in Yemen mobilize missiles for attacks on commercial vessels. So far, it seems the military response has only emboldened the Houthis. “It is an honor for our people to be in such a confrontation with these evil forces,” Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the head of the militant group, said in a speech on Thursday, citing the US, the UK and Israel.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-presses-ahead-least-bad-235325634.html