Iran to put Fateh submarine into operation by late-November

Iranian Navy Commander Habibollah Sayyari announced that the home-made Fateh (Conqueror) submarine will join the Navy in late-November.

 

The commander went on to note that Iran achieved the technology for building submarines 20 years ago, the country's official IRNA news agency reported on Aug. 18.

 

Iran has failed to unveil the Fateh submarine despite earlier announced dates.

 

In 2011, for the first time Iranian officials announced that Fateh would launch operation, then in 2013 Sayyari said that "the submarine will become operational in the current year."

 

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan announced this March that the submarine would probably join the Navy on May 24, the date honoring the anniversary of the liberation of Khorramshahr city during the eight-year war with Iraq.

 

Dehqan said that the submarine has undergone necessary tests and its faults have been corrected.

Fateh weighs nearly 500 tonnes and it is Iran's newest semi-heavy submarine.

 

The Iranian media outlets reported that Fateh class subs can operate more than 200 meters below the sea surface for nearly five weeks.

 

The country has so far launched different classes of home-made advanced submarines including Ghadir, Qaem, Nahang, Tareq and Sina.

 

Sayyari underlined that Iran is currently mass-producing Ghadir class submarines.

Iran to Unveil New Home-Made Submarine Soon

“Fateh submarine, Kaman-class missile-launcher warships and Jamaran 2 destroyer will become operational in the current year,” Rear Admiral Sayyari told reporters Monday before his departure to Moscow to visit Russia’s defense exhibition.

In recent years, Iran has made great achievements in its defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in producing essential military equipment and systems.

Iran in late 2012 boosted its naval power in the Persian Gulf waters after a new missile launching vessel and two light submarines joined its Navy fleet.

The body of Sina-7 missile-launching frigate was launched in a ceremony in Iran's Southern port city of Bandar Abbas on the occasion of the National Day of Navy in November.

During the ceremony attended by the Iranian Navy commander, two Qadir-class light submarines also joined the Iranian naval fleet.

Earlier this year, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said the country's second home-made Mowdge-class destroyer, ‘Jamaran 2’, has been built to help the navy in a wide range of missions.

“Jamaran 2 destroyer has been built with the purpose of safeguarding the Islamic Republic of Iran's sea borders and supporting missions in combat against human, goods and narcotics trafficking in the Northern parts of the country,” Brigadier General Vahidi said.

Iran's first home-made destroyer, Jamaran, was launched in late February 2010. The Mowdge Class vessel has a displacement of around 14,000 tons and is equipped with modern radars and electronic warfare capabilities and is armed with a variety of anti-ship, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles.

Iranian defense ministry officials had said earlier that the third generation of the home-made vessel, Jamaran 3 destroyer, will come into operation by the end of the current Iranian year.

Iran manufactures new indigenous submarine: Defense minister

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi says Iran has manufactured a new indigenous submarine, which will be launched in the near future.

The medium-class submarine will be launched in the next few months, Vahidi said on Saturday in the Iranian northern port city of Bandar-e Anzali.

“In the near future, we will also witness the achievements of the domestic experts in the Air and Ground [forces] and in the construction of unmanned aerial vehicles,” he added.

Iran’s Navy had previously launched the indigenous Tareq 901 and Ghadir class submarines as part of efforts to upgrade the country’s defense capabilities.

In recent years, Iran has made great achievements in the defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in essential military equipment and systems.

Iran has repeatedly assured other nations, especially its neighbors, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence.

Iranian universities constructing eight submarines

Isfahan University of Technology in cooperation with three other universities has designed eight military and civil submarines.

The construction operations of the submarines are underway, Mehr news agency reported. They have a variety of uses, including tourism, exploration, defense, and laying cables.

Iran's Deputy Defense Minister Mohammad Eslami announced earlier this month that the country plans to unveil the first indigenous submarine within the next few months.

Iran’s Nuclear Submarine Gambit

For some time now a pattern has developed in the standoff between Iran and the United States in which the U.S. and its allies strengthen sanctions against Tehran, which responds by making advances in its nuclear program. The increased sanctions and nuclear advances are then used by each side as bargaining chips in negotiations.

In the meantime the standoff has become relatively stable in the short term as Iran has carefully limited its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium and has not enriched to higher levels, while the U.S. has not acted on its military threats and has sought to constrain Israel from exercising its own military option.

In the last 24 hours two new factors have emerged that could potentially derail this stability over the next few years.

The first and most serious one was an announcement by the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, that Iran may seek nuclear submarines in the future. This is significant because nuclear submarines require nuclear fuel that is enriched to anywhere between 45 and 90 percent levels, the latter being bomb-grade.

"At present, we have no enrichment plan for purity levels above 20 percent, but when it comes to certain needs, for example, for some ships and submarines, if our researchers need to have a stronger underwater presence, we will have to make small engines which should be fueled by 45 to 56 percent enriched uranium," Abbasi-Davani said on Tuesday.

The only potential bright spot is that Abbasi-Davani said that future nuclear submarines would be designed to run on the low-end of the nuclear spectrum. Still there is no question that a decision by Iran to move beyond 20 percent uranium would be seen as a major escalation in the ongoing standoff, and one that might prompt Israel or the U.S. to act on their military threats.

It should be noted that it is quite possible (probably even likely) that Abbasi-Davani is bluffing. 

Iranian officials in the past have suggested Tehran may someday want nuclear submarines, and despite the relative stability of the current standoff Iran has clear interests in ending it given that it is the side suffering economically from sanctions. Thus making this announcement could very well be aimed at forcing the West’s hand in negotiations. This would be consistent with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s recent warnings that Iran will not negotiate simply for the sake of negotiating.

At the same time, the nuclear submarine gambit would be consistent with the trajectory of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program to date. Specifically, Iran has made incremental progress on its nuclear program without technically going beyond what non-nuclear weapon states that are in good standing have a right to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has justified making these advances on civilian grounds but the same technologies have nuclear weapon applications. While nuclear submarines are not for civilian purposes they still allow Iran to deny it has ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. Thus, in making this announcement Tehran is reminding the U.S. and its allies that if the current standoff continues, it can take actions that put it remarkably close to actually having a nuclear weapon while maintaining some plausible deniability.

This was not the only bad news Western policymakers received on Tuesday regarding Iran’s nuclear program with the rest coming from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) World Economic Outlook. In the report the IMF forecasts that, although Iran’s economy shrunk by 1.9 percent in 2012, and is expected to shrink an additional 1.3 percent this year, it will begin growing again by 2014 starting at a rate of 1.1 percent. Furthermore, the IMF believes Iran will continue to maintain an account surplus, which significantly reduces the possibility that the Islamic Republic will encounter a balance-of-payment crisis that could undermine its ability to govern.  

Although Iran has become more secretive about economic data as international sanctions against it have increased, it has continued to cooperate with the IMF, leading some to believe the IMF data on Iran’s economy are the most accurate available. If the IMF is correct in its forecast, Iranian leaders have every reason to believe that their economic situation will not get much worse than it currently is, and will in a short while begin improving.

In essence, Iran has threatened to strengthen its hand relative to the U.S. and its allies at the same time the Western powers’ hand has been shown to be weakening. The U.S. still has a number of options available short of military strikes to strengthen its bargaining position— such as additional actions to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, deepening its involvement in Syria, and/or imposing a full economic blockade on Iran— but many of these carry risks and costs which the U.S. has thus far not demonstrated a willingness to bear. In any case, it is far from clear that any of these options would have much impact on Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran to Equip IRGC with New Types of Submarines

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said that the country plans to equip the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) naval force with new submarines. 

 "Production of different types of submarines are on our agenda and naturally they will be delivered to the IRGC whenever they reach their final phase," Vahidi told FNA on Wednesday, adding that the ministry plans to equip the IRGC Navy with its new home-made submarines.

As regards the features and specifications of the new submarines, Vahidi said, "These submarines will be in models other than Qadir (light submarines) and their production and delivery to the IRGC are underway."

He said that Iran is producing military tools based on its doctrine of asymmetric defense.

Last month, Iran boosted its naval power in Persian Gulf waters after a new missile launching vessel and two light submarines joined its Navy fleet.

During the ceremony attended by Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, two Qadir-class light submarines also joined the Iranian naval fleet.

All parts of the Qadir-class submarines, including the hull, radar equipment and advanced defense systems, have been made domestically.

The submarines are appropriate vessels for different naval missions, including reconnaissance and combat in territorial waters, specially in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz which are not wide enough for the maneuvering of large warships and submarines.

Homemade In Iran

At the end of November, Iran announced a new class of warships, the Sina-7 class frigates. All that was shown was pictures of the completed hull and superstructure. The ship had yet to be fitted out with weapons, electronics, or most other equipment. That is supposed to take place over the next year or two. But the Iranians couldn’t wait to announce what a great ship this would be. These announcements are seen as useful to cheer the population up.

The Sina-7 appeared to be a 2,000-2,500 ton vessel armed with one 76mm gun, missiles, and a helicopter. Basically its an improvement over the earlier Jamaran class corvettes. Two of these have been put into service so far. Until the Sina-7 came along the Jamaran class was the largest locally built surface warship in Iran. One of the Jarmarans was assigned to the Caspian Sea, the other to the Indian Ocean. The Jarmarans were described as “destroyers” when first announced (as under construction) five years ago. In fact, it's a 1,400 ton corvette. The new ship has a crew of 140 and is equipped with anti-aircraft, (one 40mm and two 20mm cannon, four small missiles) anti-submarine (six torpedoes), and anti-ship (four C-802 missiles) weapons. At the moment, the Jarmaran seems to be filled mostly with hope and press releases. The navy made a point that the Sini-7s were better built than the Jarmarans. 

The Iranian navy could certainly use some new warships. Currently, the only major surface warships it has are three elderly British built frigates (1,540 tons each) and two U.S. built corvettes (1,100 tons each). There are about fifty smaller patrol craft, ten of them armed with Chinese anti-ship missiles. There are another few dozen mine warfare, amphibious, and support ships. The three most powerful ships in the fleet are three Russian Kilo class subs. There are about fifty mini-subs, most of them built in Iran.

All that's been heard of from Iran's naval shipbuilding facility at the Bushehr shipyard are reports of labor problems. There have been strikes and lockouts as well as complaints of poor designs and sloppy management. Iran has, for the last two decades, announced many new, locally made, weapons that turned out to be more spin than substance.

Iran does have commercial shipbuilding firms that produce merchant ships that are larger than destroyers. Thus it was believed that Iran could build something that looks like a destroyer. The Jamaran class ships have Chinese C802 anti-ship missiles, but a lot of the other necessary military electronics are harder to get and install in a seagoing ship. Iran has coped by using commercial equipment. This does not make for a formidable warship but does enable high seas operations.

Iran is trying to expand its growing (slowly) naval power on all its coasts (Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean). Thus, for the last four years, Iran has had one or more of its few surface warships working with the international anti-piracy patrol off Somalia. This was the first time since the 1970s that the Iranian Navy has conducted sustained operations outside its coastal waters. Despite their own Islamic radical government, the Iranian sailors have got along with the other members of the patrol, including the United States (which is officially the "Great Satan" back home). 

Encouraged by this, Iran announced that it would send more of its warships off to distant areas, mainly to show the world that Iran was a naval power capable of such reach.

Technically, the Iranians can pull this off but just barely. And this is mainly because, in the last decade, Iran has been building some larger warships. Not really large but big enough to take trips across the Indian Ocean. Two years ago, for example, the Iranian Navy sent its first domestically built destroyer, the Jamaran, to sea. In two years it hopes to do the same with the larger Sina-7s. But both these vessels are hastily built by yards with no experience in building surface warships. That means a lot of mistakes will be made. Moreover, the Iranians cannot get modern weapons and are equipping these ships with whatever they can scrounge up.

Dodging submarines in the Strait of Hormuz

UAE pipeline deprives Iran of a potential target

The United Arab Emirates is celebrating the opening of its first oil export pipeline. So is the oil market and a lot of governments around the world.

About the only folks not celebrating are the Iranians.

What makes the Iranians so grumpy is that the 235-mile pipeline the UAE officially opened Sunday can carry up to 1.8 million barrels of crude oil a day to a port facing the Indian Ocean, where it will be loaded onto tankers and shipped to refineries around the world.

That’s 1.8 million fewer barrels of oil shipped via the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes. This is the same waterway Iran keeps threatening to block unless the rest of the world backs off demands that Tehran abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The West claims the new pipeline diminishes the strategic value of the Hormuz Strait. At the same time, Iran points out that most of the region’s oil still has to pass through the strait to get to market. Both sides are right, which means Iran’s threats still carry weight, just not as much as before.

This latest pipeline joins several in the region taking overland routes to export terminals outside the Gulf from such key producers as Saudi Arabia. For anyone relying on those barrels, avoiding the Hormuz Strait is a victory for logic, engineering, and commerce aimed at frustrating Iran.

Of course, the need to avoid belligerent naval action is a great motivator. Hitler’s submarines triggered the 1940s boom in pipeline projects linking Texas and New York. No one wants to test whether Iran’s sub captains are as effective at sinking tankers as German U-boat commanders once were off the East Coast.

But pipelines aren’t bomb proof. They can be sabotaged, as we’ve seen many times in the Middle East, or plundered for cheap fuel, often with tragic consequences, as we’ve seen in Nigeria.

While depriving Iran’s navy of easy tanker targets might feel good, it can also give the market a false sense of security. Let’s face it: given the volatile politics of the Middle East, not even deeply-trenched pipelines can offer a bullet-proof guarantee against supply disruptions from the region that provides over a quarter of the world’s oil.

US deploys robot submarine armada against Iranian mines

 The US is deploying a fleet of robotic submarine mine clearers to the Middle East to counter threats by Iran that it will close off the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of world oil supplies travel.

 The Sea Fox submersibles, manufactured by German firm Atlas Electronik, come equipped with a TV camera and sonar and are deployed from minesweepers or helicopters. Once in the water they can be controlled via a fiber optic link and are designed to locate mines and explode them using a shaped charge that was originally designed to destroy tanks.

The units are 1.3 meters long and weigh about 43kg, with an operating depth of 300 meters. They are quite sluggish, with a top speed of just six knots, but since mines are usually static or simply drifting this is enough to get them into position for detonation. Some models are unarmed and used solely for scouting out new targets.

Sea Fox

The Sea Fox goes after mines in a kamikaze mission

One downside of the Sea Fox is that the destruction of target mines also destroys the submersible, and at around $100,000 a unit it's an expensive way to clear obstacles. While this is not as expensive as seeing a warship or supertanker holed and sunk, with Iran claiming it has thousands of mines ready to deploy the final bill for any conflict could be high.

The US has refitted one of their older warships, USS Ponce, to act as an Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) for the Sea Fox fleet and it has joined eight minesweepers and a fleet of MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters in the Gulf. The US now has several carrier groups in the region and dispatched a squadron of F-22 stealthy fighters there in April.

USS Ponce

Officials in Iran have threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions against the country continue. At its narrowest point the Strait is just 34 miles wide and Admiral Habibollah Sayyari of the Iranian navy told the BBC that the country could close both it, and the surrounding seaways, using its fleet of midget submarines and fast attack boats – both of which have mine laying capability.

"Closing the Strait of Hormuz is such an easy job for the Islamic Republic of Iran's armed forces," he said. "It's actually a basic capability of the navy."

US quietly prepares for naval clash with Iran in Strait of Hormuz

Iran is ramping up its production of mini-submarines, which are 'a huge problem' for US naval power. The US has countered by sending minesweepers to the region.

Iranian submarines participate in a naval parade on the last day of a war game in the Sea of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year.

Iran’s mini-submarines and Special Forces “frogmen” spell trouble for the US Navy

The Iranian military has a growing fleet of mini-submarines that is particularly difficult for the US Navy to detect and track. They are kitted out with torpedoes, highly-trained SEAL-like frogmen, and – most troublesome for the US military – mines that could threaten to shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane.

In response, the commander of US forces in the region recently announced that the Navy would be doubling the number of its US minesweepers in the Gulf. The ranks of these minesweepers had remained steady for the past decade, but have risen from four to eight since June.

The ramped-up Iranian production of mini-submarines – as well as the Pentagon’s response – threatens to ratchet up military tensions in the region, analysts say.

The additional four Avenger-class minesweepers arrived in Bahrain on June 24. Along with the minesweepers, the Navy also sent additional minesweeping helicopters called “Sea Dragons.”

Their mission will be to counter the Iranian mini-submarines, which are “a huge problem for us,” says retired Navy Cmdr. Christopher Harmer, who from 2008 to 2009 was the director of future operations for the US Navy Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain.

“They are a threat to us because they can disperse them throughout the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, and it’s extremely difficult for us to track them,” he adds. As a result, they can lay "in wait to execute an ambush.”

The challenge of mini-subs

The US Navy is more accustomed to tracking large, Soviet-era nuclear-class submarines – something Iran knows well, adds Commander Harmer. “Looking for small subs in shallow water is much more difficult, because the acoustics are so much more difficult – smaller makes less noise.”

As a result, he adds, the Iranian military-industrial complex “has prioritized these mini-subs – and have gone into overdrive building them.” Mini-submarines are generally considered any submarine vessel under 500 tons and roughly 100 feet long or less.

Five years ago, the Iranian military had “no mini-subs,” says Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. Now they have 19 in service, and are building an average of four per year – a “strategically significant” force, he adds.

Iran submarine plan may fuel Western nuclear worries

Iran's announcement that it plans to build its first nuclear-powered submarine is stoking speculation it could serve as a pretext for the Islamic state to produce highly enriched uranium and move closer to potential atom bomb material.

Western experts doubt that Iran - which is under a U.N. arms embargo - has the capability any time soon to make the kind of sophisticated underwater vessel that only the world's most powerful states currently have.

But they say Iran could use the plan to justify more sensitive atomic activity, because nuclear submarines can be fuelled by uranium refined to a level that would also be suitable for the explosive core of a nuclear warhead.

"Such submarines often use HEU (highly enriched uranium)," former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Olli Heinonen said, adding Iran was unlikely to be able source the fuel abroad because of the international dispute over its nuclear programme.

It could then "cite the lack of foreign fuel suppliers as further justification for continuing on its uranium enrichment path", Heinonen, now at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said.

Any move by Iran to enrich to a higher purity would alarm the United States and its allies, which suspect it is seeking to develop the capability to make nuclear bombs and want it to curb its nuclear programme. Tehran denies any atomic arms ambitions.

It would also likely further complicate diplomatic efforts to resolve the decade-old row over Tehran's nuclear programme and may add to fears of a military confrontation.

Several rounds of talks between Iran and six world powers this year have so far failed to make significant progress, especially over their demand that the Islamic Republic scale back its controversial enrichment work.

"LEVERAGE"

"Iran is using this submarine announcement to create bargaining leverage," Shashank Joshi, a senior fellow and Middle East specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, said.

"It can negotiate away these 'plans' for concessions, or use the plans as a useful pretext for its enrichment activity."

Iranian deputy navy commander Abbas Zamini was last month quoted as saying that "preliminary steps in making an atomic submarine have started"..

He did not say how such a vessel would be fuelled, but experts said it may require high-grade uranium.

Iran now refines uranium to reach a 3.5 percent concentration of the fissile isotope U-235 - suitable for nuclear power plants - as well as 20 percent, which it says is for a medical research reactor in Tehran.

Nuclear weapons need a fissile purity of 90 percent, about the same level as is used to fuel U.S. nuclear submarines.

"This is a bald excuse to enrich uranium above 20 percent," Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London, said.

A Western diplomat agreed that it could provide another possible justification for making highly enriched uranium, adding Iran could also use medical isotope production as an excuse.

"What it all means to me is that they could enrich above 20 percent, or even just say they intend to, and then point to some or all of these 'justifications'," the envoy said.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for purely peaceful energy and medical purposes and that it is its right to process uranium for reactor fuel under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global pact to prevent the spread of atomic arms.

An Iranian lawmaker this week said parliament planned to ask the government to equip Iran's naval and research fleet with "non-fossil" engines, Press TV state television reported in an apparent reference to nuclear fuel.

While nuclear submarines generally run on highly refined uranium, merchant vessels can also operate on low-enriched fuel, Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

The six powers - the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia - want Iran to halt 20 percent enrichment. If Iran not only rejected this demand but also started enriching to even higher levels, it would risk dramatically raising the stakes in the dispute.

COSTLY SUBS

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, sparking fears of a possible escalation into a new Middle East war.

The submarine statement and this week's missile tests by the Islamic Republic signalled Iranian defiance at a time when the West is stepping up the sanctions pressure on the major crude producer with a European Union oil embargo.

"I see this as an effort to demonstrate Iranian resolve at a time when sanctions are getting unprecedentedly tight," Joshi, of the Royal United Services Institute, said.

It is difficult and very expensive to make atomic submarines. "There is no way that Iran could build a nuclear-powered submarine," Fitzpatrick said.

Such submarines - which the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain have - can be at sea without refuelling and stay under water for much longer periods than those using diesel, experts said.

Naval reactors deliver a lot of power from a small volume and therefore run on highly enriched uranium but the level varies from 20 percent or less to as much as 93 percent in the latest U.S. submarines, the World Nuclear Association, a London-based industry body, said on its website.

Iran's announcement is another statement "that they are capable of producing the most-advanced and prestigious military technology and, as usual, there is little truth in what is being claimed", military expert Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank, said.

Iran submarine plan may fuel Western nuclear worries

Iran's announcement that it plans to build its first nuclear-powered submarine is stoking speculation it could serve as a pretext for the Islamic state to produce highly enriched uranium and move closer to potential atom bomb material.

Western experts doubt that Iran - which is under a U.N. arms embargo - has the capability any time soon to make the kind of sophisticated underwater vessel that only the world's most powerful states currently have.

But they say Iran could use the plan to justify more sensitive atomic activity, because nuclear submarines can be fuelled by uranium refined to a level that would also be suitable for the explosive core of a nuclear warhead.

"Such submarines often use HEU (highly enriched uranium)," former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Olli Heinonen said, adding Iran was unlikely to be able source the fuel abroad because of the international dispute over its nuclear program.

It could then "cite the lack of foreign fuel suppliers as further justification for continuing on its uranium enrichment path", Heinonen, now at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said.

Any move by Iran to enrich to a higher purity would alarm the United States and its allies, which suspect it is seeking to develop the capability to make nuclear bombs and want it to curb its nuclear program. Tehran denies any atomic arms ambitions.

It would also likely further complicate diplomatic efforts to resolve the decade-old row over Tehran's nuclear program and may add to fears of a military confrontation.

Several rounds of talks between Iran and six world powers this year have so far failed to make significant progress, especially over their demand that the Islamic Republic scale back its controversial enrichment work.

"LEVERAGE"

"Iran is using this submarine announcement to create bargaining leverage," Shashank Joshi, a senior fellow and Middle East specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, said.

"It can negotiate away these 'plans' for concessions, or use the plans as a useful pretext for its enrichment activity."

Iranian deputy navy commander Abbas Zamini was last month quoted as saying that "preliminary steps in making an atomic submarine have started".

He did not say how such a vessel would be fuelled, but experts said it may require high-grade uranium.

Iran now refines uranium to reach a 3.5 percent concentration of the fissile isotope U-235 - suitable for nuclear power plants - as well as 20 percent, which it says is for a medical research reactor in Tehran.

Nuclear weapons need a fissile purity of 90 percent, about the same level as is used to fuel U.S. nuclear submarines.

"This is a bald excuse to enrich uranium above 20 percent," Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London, said.

A Western diplomat agreed that it could provide another possible justification for making highly enriched uranium, adding Iran could also use medical isotope production as an excuse.

"What it all means to me is that they could enrich above 20 percent, or even just say they intend to, and then point to some or all of these 'justifications'," the envoy said.

Iran says its nuclear program is for purely peaceful energy and medical purposes and that it is its right to process uranium for reactor fuel under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global pact to prevent the spread of atomic arms.

An Iranian lawmaker this week said parliament planned to ask the government to equip Iran's naval and research fleet with "non-fossil" engines, Press TV state television reported in an apparent reference to nuclear fuel.

While nuclear submarines generally run on highly refined uranium, merchant vessels can also operate on low-enriched fuel, Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

The six powers - the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia - want Iran to halt 20 percent enrichment. If Iran not only rejected this demand but also started enriching to even higher levels, it would risk dramatically raising the stakes in the dispute.

COSTLY SUBS

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, sparking fears of a possible escalation into a new Middle East war.

The submarine statement and this week's missile tests by the Islamic Republic signaled Iranian defiance at a time when the West is stepping up the sanctions pressure on the major crude producer with a European Union oil embargo.

"I see this as an effort to demonstrate Iranian resolve at a time when sanctions are getting unprecedentedly tight," Joshi, of the Royal United Services Institute, said.

It is difficult and very expensive to make atomic submarines. "There is no way that Iran could build a nuclear-powered submarine," Fitzpatrick said.

Such submarines - which the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain have - can be at sea without refueling and stay under water for much longer periods than those using diesel, experts said.

Naval reactors deliver a lot of power from a small volume and therefore run on highly enriched uranium but the level varies from 20 percent or less to as much as 93 percent in the latest U.S. submarines, the World Nuclear Association, a London-based industry body, said on its website.

Iran's announcement is another statement "that they are capable of producing the most-advanced and prestigious military technology and, as usual, there is little truth in what is being claimed", military expert Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank, said.

Iran to use mines, missiles to shut Hormuz

Iranian lawmakers call for closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz amid a sharpening confrontation in the Persian Gulf while Revolutionary Guards display their missile might against a mock U.S. base during desert exercises.

But Tehran has a range of other weapons it can use to close down the vital oil artery.

These include the hard-to-detect Chinese EM-52 "rocket mine" that's triggered by the distinctive magnetic our acoustic signature of a ship, such as a U.S. aircraft carrier, and then launches a propelled 600-popund warhead at the target.

Then there's the Russian MDM6, equally difficult to detect, that can tackle multiple targets. It lies on the seabed that fires a torpedo-like warhead when it senses a vessel.

Both these mines can be laid by Iran's three Russian-built Kilo-class submarines.

As the United States builds up its forces in the gulf, including the recent arrival of four new mines countermeasures ships to boost U.S.-British minesweeping strength to 12, the New York Times quoted a senior Defense Department official as saying:

"The message to Iran is, 'Don't even think about it'. Don't even think about closing the strait. We'll clear the mines.

"Don't even think about sending your fast boats out to harass our vessels or commercial shipping. We'll put them on the bottom of the gulf."

It's clear the U.S. 5th Fleet, which right now includes two battle groups headed by the carriers Abraham Lincoln and the Enterprise and their formidable force of F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets, and U.S. air power in the region is vastly superior to Iran's military forces.

But the Iranians aren't planning to fight a conventional war with the more technologically advanced Americans.

They plan to employ what's known as asymmetric warfare, in which the weaker forces using unconventional means to overcome the power of a strong opponent.

That means mines, anti-ship missiles and swarm attacks by small heavily armed boats. Think Lilliputians against Gulliver.

By most accounts, Iran is believed to have as many as 3,000 sea mines. Some estimates go as high as 5,000.

Whatever, it's the fourth largest sea mine arsenal in the world after the United States, Russia and China, which has been supplying Iran with these weapons since 1998.

The EM-52 is probably the most dangerous mine Iran has. But the bottom-influence EM-11 and the EM-31 moored mine can also play havoc with surface craft.

So while the anonymous Pentagon official cited by The New York Times may well be right that the Americans will deep six Iran's warships, the allied naval forces face a formidable foe.

"Iran's ability to lay a large number of mines in a short period of time remains a critical aspect of the stated capability to deny U.S. forces access to the gulf and impede or halt shipping through the strait," cautioned U.S. analyst Anthony Cordesman in a March analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Iran has hundreds of anti-ship missiles, including 300 Chinese-designed C-201 Seersucker weapons and 200 C-801 indigenous Noor systems, deployed along its long gulf coastline, as well as air-launched weapons and cruise missiles.

"It's notable that the U.S. never successfully targeted Iraq's anti-ship missile assets during the war to liberate Kuwait, although they were deployed along a far smaller coastal area," Cordesman observed.

Iran's air force is largely made up of aging U.S.-built F-4 Phantoms and F-14 Tomcats acquired during the reign of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi before he was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with some Soviet-era MiG-29s and Sukhoi Su-24 ground-attack jets.

These are outclassed and outgunned by the U.S. air power now deployed in the gulf.

Although Iran's army and the more formidable Revolutionary Guards Corps, a combined force of some 400,000 troops, vastly outnumber U.S. and allied ground forces, it's not likely that any conflict will involve such forces to any significant extent.

So it's from the sea the Iranians will out up their main fight.

How long the shooting will last is anyone's guess. U.S. firepower and technology will doubtless triumph in the end, but it won't be cost-free.

Hormuz could be closed to tanker traffic for several weeks, and the disruption in oil supplies will trigger severe global economic problems.

But it remains to be seen whether that will mean Iran backs off its nuclear project prog

Iran to deploy submarines in Caspian Sea

With three super-heavy submarines operating in the Persian Gulf, Iran is seeking to use lighter submarines in the Caspian Sea.

Admiral Abbas Zamini told Fars news agency that Iran's navy has made huge gains and become self-sufficient in designing, building and repairing its own submarines.

Iran is producing semi-heavy submarines with the goal of building super-heavy ones in the future.

The projects are part of an overall strategy to expand Iran's naval fleet and presence in international waters. Currently, battle groups are getting ready to set sail for the north Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aden.

An exercise outside Iran's border kept a super-heavy submarine under water for 67 days in the Red Sea.

In February, Iran's navy sent ships through the Suez Canal for the second time since Iran's revolution.