'On board of the oldest US aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, Panetta told the crowd of 1,700 sailors that the 50-year-old ship is heading to the Persian Gulf region in a direct message to Tehran.
“The reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East ... We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it's better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy," Panetta said.
The USS Enterprise is the oldest active duty ship in the American naval fleet and its mission dates back to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and the Vietnam War.'
Read more: US to Send Old Warship to Persian Gulf in Potential Pearl Harbour Redux
With the collapse of the oil embargo to force Iran into a confrontation over the Straight of Hormuz, the US and Israel are looking for another way to get the long-sought war with Iran started, and more to the point, need to make it look like Iran is starting hostilities in order to make it politically more difficult for Russia and China to support Iran.
'Now, recall that Israel has a past history of attacking US warships and framing others to trick the US into attacks on Israel's enemies, with the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (initially blamed on Egypt) as the most well-known example.
So here we have the USS Enterprise, the oldest carrier in the fleet, on her last legs, scheduled to be decommissioned next year. Her name is well known, in part because of the Star Trek TV series. Decommissioning a nuclear aircraft carrier is a very expensive process. USS Enterprise is powered by 8 nuclear reactors, all of which must be disposed of as nuclear waste material along with all the associated machinery. The US Navy would save a great deal of money, more than the scrap worth of the steel, if USS Enterprise were to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, where the radioactive mess is someone else's problem to deal with.
So, why send an ancient ship at the end of her useful life into harms way? The same reason Franklin Roosevelt moved a bunch of obsolete warships from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, while the newer carriers and warships were well away from Hawaii on December 7th, 1941.
Israel has 3 Dolphin submarines, given to her by Germany. They have been seen transiting the Suez Canal in the past, and could well be operating in the Gulf of Oman, even the Persian Gulf by now, lying in wait for a used-up and obsolete warship, more useful as a sacrificial lamb than an actual weapon, a ship with American sailors, to be attacked as Israel attacked the USS Liberty, then to be blamed on the designated target, Iran, by a compliant media.'
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