Iran

Iran Wants Military Base in Syria Near Israeli Border

The civil war in Syria has been a bloody affair and if the Iranian government gets its wish, the bloodshed will spread beyond the Syrian borders. With the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria, Iran wants a military base in southern Syria along the border with Israel and Jordan.

The move would be to weaken US influence in the region, eventually forcing the United States out and then opening up another avenue which to attack Israel and the Jordanians, one of the US’ closest allies in the region.

“A permanent Iranian military base in Syria, potentially near the border with Israel or Jordan, would increase Iran’s operational capacity to inflict serious damage against two of our closest allies in the region,” Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
That warning points to the strategic significance of the Syrian civil war, beyond the importance of defeating the Islamic State. Trump’s team has authorized an intense barrage of airstrikes on ISIS, while opening the door to cooperation with Russia; a senior State Department official recently attended a peace talks summit between Syrian President Bashar Assad and opposition forces that was led by the Russians. But Russia is propping up Assad in partnership with Iran, which means the defeat of ISIS could inaugurate a new phase of regional rivalry.
Roskam and Deutch have a similar concern. “Iran is actively working to establish a permanent military presence in Syria,” they wrote Tillerson. “The Islamic Republic seeks to solidify its access to the Mediterranean Sea by building a permanent seaport and constructing numerous military installations throughout the country. A permanent Iranian military presence in Syria would greatly harm U.S. interests in the region and decrease the likelihood of reaching a political agreement to end the Syrian civil war.”

Nothing good can come from the Iranians having a permanent military presence in Syria. Attacks against Israel and Jordan would soon follow and the region can ill-afford that bloodshed to escalate.

To read the entire article from the Washington Examiner click here:

Photo courtesy Getty Images

Remembering Bull Simons, A True Legend in the Special Forces Community

On May 21, 1979, Special Forces had one its true legends take from it prematurely. Arthur “Bull” Simons died at the age of 60 and was buried in Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida. He was one of the best SF commanders to have ever served but never made it to General Officer rank because he lacked the prerequisite education he and that held him back.

Simons rose to the rank of Colonel and although he was involved in three famous rescue missions that have been very well documented, precious little has been written about Simons who was quintessential “Quiet Professional” in his long military career. So who was “Bull” Simons?

Early Life and Career: Simons was born in New York City in 1918 but at an early age he moved to Missouri and attended the University of Missouri – Columbia and graduated with a degree in Journalism which is interesting because later in life, he’d develop a healthy disdain for journalists who he felt had done a great disservice to the American fighting men.

He joined ROTC and graduated in 1941. He also met his wife Lucille in college and they remained married for 37 years until her death from cancer in 1978. His first assignment was with the 98^th Field Artillery Battalion as a 2LT. The 98^th was a unit that was towed by pack mules and Simons was an unhappy camper there. When his unit was dissolved, it became a part of the 6^th Ranger Bn, commanded by LTC Henry Mucci.

Simons became the Commander of B Company and later the Bn XO. One of his first mission in the Rangers was to blow up a Japanese radio station. The story of the mission was told by H. Ross Perot to John Gresham for a piece in “The Year in Special Operations 2010 – 2011.

“They sent him along with a team of Rangers over to an island to destroy a Japanese radio tower,” Perot said. “They went over by submarine at night, surfaced, and went ashore in rubber rafts. They then stored the rafts in a triple-canopy jungle, and then in classic Simons style, he did a lot of reconnaissance on the radio station himself, and kept his men in the jungle. He had a total of 16 people up at the base camp, with one man on duty all the time. He never told his men they had to eat whatever they could find in the jungle, and they were there for over 30 days, while he waited for the right conditions to make the attack.
“Finally, they had a monsoon-like rain one night. Simons knew from his observations that the guard never looked down the cliff. So he climbed the cliff with explosives on his back and a knife during the storm, caught the guard totally by surprise, took him out with the knife, and took the guard’s rifle, went into the Japanese barracks and shot the other 15 Japanese soldiers in their sleep.
“He told me this story in front of a nice lady who responded, ‘… He shot them in their sleep?’ He told the woman, ‘Lady, when you’re in combat, you don’t wake your enemy up and say, “Let’s fight!”’ Once all the Japanese in the barracks were dead, he went back outside, personally blew up the radio tower, and needed to send one more signal to his troops that the job was done, so he lighted his cigar! He was a big cigar man! Bull then walked down the face of the mountain, where his men met him in the jungle, they having walked completely around the mountain. They then called the submarine back in, and took the rubber rafts back to the submarine to go home.”

Later, after the invasion of the Philippines, on the island of Luzon, he was involved in the raid on the Prisoner of War camp at Cabanatuan. The 6^th Ranger Bn freed nearly 500 POWs and 33 civilians that had been held by the Japanese since the fall of Bataan. The Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Philippine guerrillas killed 523 Japanese soldiers with the loss of just 2 Rangers and one POW who died of a heart attack during the raid. He was awarded the Silver Star for heroism for that operation.

Simons was separated from the Army after World War II and had a five-year break in service. But he was recalled to the Army during the Korean War. He was assigned to train Rangers at Eglin AFB in jungle and amphibious warfare. After a brief stint as a PAO (Public Affairs Officer) at Ft. Bragg, NC he joined Special Forces in 1957.

He was assigned to the 77^th Special Forces Group, later renamed the 7^th. In 1961, Simons was promoted to lieutenant colonel and with the conflict in Southeast Asia on the horizon went to Laos to command a 107-man Mobile Training Team as part of Operation White Star.

Returning from Laos, Simons was named as the Commander of the new 8^th Special Forces Group in Panama. He commanded the unit there from 1962 to 1964. Then it was back to Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, Simons was assigned to the Military Assistance Command’s Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG), the joint unit that was responsible for many of the cross-border intelligence gathering and special operations missions of the Vietnam war.

In 1970 Simons was tasked to lead Operation Ivory Coast, the rescue of American POWs at Son Tay Prison just a few miles outside of Hanoi. The hand-picked unit of Army Special Forces and Air Force pilots trained in Eglin, AFB before launching the mission in November.

Blue Boy Element, Son Tay Raid. Dick Meadows in the front. (US Army)

Because of an intelligence snafu, flooding from the swollen river had caused the Vietnamese to move the prisoners a few miles down the road. The raid, however, went extremely well, the SF operators eliminated the guards in the camp and only suffered one minor injury. Although no prisoners were freed, it sent shockwaves thru the Vietnamese high command as American Special Forces were able to penetrate their defenses so close to Hanoi and raid a POW compound and escape without any loss to themselves.

As a result, the prisoners were brought together in larger groups instead of the solitary confinement they’d been subjected to. Their treatment improved markedly and as they watched the raid unfold, they knew that they’d not been forgotten. Their morale increased.

Simons was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by President Nixon at the White House after returning to the states. An interesting footnote to the Son Tay raid was the Assault Force element (Blue Boy) commander CPT Richard Meadows would be heavily involved in the formation of the Army’s Delta Force and would later be involved in the Iran Hostage Rescue attempt in 1980.

Simons retired from the Army in 1971 and bought a pig farm in Red Bay, Florida and was enjoying retirement until his wife’s passing from cancer in 1978. But his career of prisoner rescues was not over. Following the Iranian Revolution, members of H. Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems company (EDS), who were working in Iran were arrested by the revolutionaries.

Perot contacted Simons, having remembered him from the Son Tay raid. Paying for the entire operation out of his own pocket, Perot recruited Simons to send a team into Iran, free his employees and bring all of the people back to the United States. The mission was successful and Perot’s employees, as well as all of Simons’ men, returned safely.

But he wasn’t able to enjoy retirement for long. Shortly after returning from Iran, Simons suffered a heart attack and subsequent surgery couldn’t save him and he died on May 21, 1979. He’s buried in Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida not far from Pensacola Naval Air Station. His close friend, Meadows who died in 1995, is buried close by.

The Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) commissioned a statue of Simons, next to the Special Forces Museum at Fort Bragg (called “Simons Hall”), and it is a continuing tribute to his memory and legacy in the special warfare community. USSOCOM bestows a yearly award bearing his name to the top special warfare professional.

Photo courtesy of US Army

Pentagon Suspects Iran – North Korea Military Connection

The Pentagon is closely monitoring the recent failed launch of an Iranian underwater cruise missile from a midget submarine as evidence of influence by North Korea with the government in Tehran.

The Pyongyang connection theory has some merit as the design of both the sub and missile closely resemble a design of North Korea.

According to U.S. defense officials, Iran was attempting to launch a Jask-2 cruise missile underwater for the first time, but the launch failed. Nonproliferation experts have long suspected North Korea and Iran are sharing expertise when it comes to their rogue missile programs.
“The very first missiles we saw in Iran were simply copies of North Korean missiles,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a missile proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Over the years, we’ve seen photographs of North Korean and Iranian officials in each other’s countries, and we’ve seen all kinds of common hardware.”
When Iran tested a ballistic missile in late January, the Pentagon said it was based on a North Korean design. Last summer, Iran conducted another missile launch similar to a North Korean Musudan, the most advanced missile Pyongyang has successful tested to date.
Defense analysts say North Korea’s Taepodong missile looks almost identical to Iran’s Shahab.
“In the past, we would see things in North Korea and they would show up in Iran. In some recent years, we’ve seen some small things appear in Iran first and then show up in North Korea and so that raises the question of whether trade — which started off as North Korea to Iran — has started to reverse,” Lewis added.

Midget submarines are small and hard to detect since they run on battery power. And the US no longer has any land-based short- or medium-range missiles because it is a signatory to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, the treaty signed in 1987. But Iran and North Korea are under no such constraints since neither signed the treaty.

The site of the failed launch, the Strait of Hormuz is where most of the world’s oil passes thru daily and is a source of concern for the US and others.

To read the entire article from Fox News, click here:

File Photo courtesy AP

Operation Eagle Claw, Disaster At Desert One Brings Changes to Special Operations

The images were stark and startling after the debacle at Desert One in Iran on April 24, 1980, 37 years ago today. An incinerated C-130 aircraft and six RH-53 helicopters left with bodies burned and strewn about spoke of the failure of the United States to rescue the 52 diplomats and Embassy personnel held in Tehran, Iran.

The story began more than 170 days prior when on November 4, 1979, when Iranian militant students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took the diplomats hostage. Then President Jimmy Carter put into motion the plan that would use the US’ new hostage rescue force “Delta Force” into action.

The ultimate mission failure would generate much-needed lessons learned to pave the way for dedicated special operations air assets and a new Special Operations command structure that we know today.

So how exactly did this dark day in US Special Operations history change things for the better for the troops that followed?

The Plan:
Since no joint Special Operations Command existed at the time, the National Security Adviser, the Joint Chiefs, and the Secretary of Defense put together an ad-hoc task force to plan, and conduct the mission.

The staff planning began in November of 1979 and by early March they had what they considered a workable plan. It brought together members of four of the branches of service with personnel and units spread across the globe which would prove to be ominous.

Army Major General James B. Vaught was appointed Joint Task Force commander. The remainder of the officers assigned to lead the various components, including Colonel Charles A. Beckwith (Delta Force commander) to be the ground assault commander; Colonel James H. Kyle (USAF MC-130 special operator) to command the fixed wing contingent; and Marine Lieutenant Colonel Edward Seiffert to lead the helicopter force.

It was a very intricate and detailed operation and consisted of the following details:

On the night of D-1, six Air Force C-130s carrying 132 Delta Force operators, Army Rangers, and support personnel and additional helicopter fuel would fly from the island of Masirah, off the coast of Oman, more than 1,000 miles to Desert One.

The Hercules transports were to be refueled in flight from Air Force KC-135 tankers. Eight Navy RH-53Ds (Code named Bluebeards) would lift off from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz, about 50 miles south of the Iranian coast, and fly more than 600 miles to Desert One.

After refueling on the ground from the C-130s, the helicopters would carry the rescue force to a hideout in the hills about 50 miles southeast of Tehran., then fly to a separate hiding spot nearby and wait.

The C- 130s (code named Republics) would return to Masirah, being refueled in flight again. The next night, Delta Force would be driven to the United States Embassy in vehicles obtained by agents that were previously placed in-country led by CIA operatives including former Son Tay raider Dick Meadows.

A Ranger element would go to rescue the three American hostages held in the foreign ministry building. As the ground units were freeing the hostages, the helicopters would fly from their hiding spot to the embassy and the foreign ministry building.

Three Air Force AC-130 gunships were tasked to protect the rescue force from any Iranian counterattack and to destroy the three Iranian Air Force fighters located at the Tehran airport. The helicopters with the Rangers, Delta operators, and the hostages would fly the rescue force and the freed hostages to an abandoned air base at Manzariyeh, about 50 miles southwest of Tehran, which was to be seized and protected by a Ranger company flown in on C-130s.

The helicopters would then be destroyed and C-141s, flown in from Saudi Arabia, would then fly the entire group to a base in Egypt.

It was an extremely detailed plan and everything was based on timing and coordination between different units that had never worked together before.

OPSEC for this endeavor was so strict that the individual units assigned to the mission never worked together until the implementation order was given and the mission began. The training for the operation was highly decentralized and although each part of the rescue operation had rehearsed their portion of the mission, the fact that the different elements never worked together was a major factor in mission failure.

There was never a “dress rehearsal” of the mission and many of the issues found by individual components in training resurfaced on the actual mission.

One particular area of concern was the close proximity of the C-130s and the RH-53 choppers in the refueling portion of the operation. And in many instances, the two didn’t work hand-in-hand during training. This would later prove disastrous.

The number of helicopters needed as an absolute minimum was four but it was decided that the raid would not continue without six. Eight aircraft were tasked to the mission.

The Mission, ‘Murphy’s Law Sets In:
The mission began on the night of 24 April after President Carter gave the go-ahead on April 16.

The C-130s took off as planned from Masirah and headed into Iranian airspace for their refueling rendezvous with the helicopter force at Desert One.

At the same time, the helicopter force of eight RH-53Ds lifted off from the deck of the U.S.S. Nimitz heading for the Iranian coast about 50 miles away. This was when a series of events began to go wrong that ultimately doom the mission.

Two hours into the mission, helicopter (Bluebeard) 6 received a warning on its Blade Inspection Method, or BIM system, which indicated a possible impending rotor blade failure. The pilots landed immediately and were picked up by another helicopter. But they abandoned the chopper without the means of destroying it.

The C-130s flew into a sandstorm (haboob) a phenomenon common to the desert in the region. They were able to push on thru with little difficulty. They later hit another denser sandstorm but were unable to contact the helicopter pilots to give them a fair warning because communications were never established between the C-130s and the helicopters.

Bluebeard 5 began experiencing issues with their electrical systems while flying into the dust storm. Many of their navigational and flight instruments began to fail. With no way to ascertain their exact location, Helicopter 5 decided to abort the mission and return to the Nimitz. Later it was deemed that in 20-25 minutes it would have cleared the sandstorm and been able to proceed with the mission. The raiding task force was now down to the bare minimum six helicopters needed to conduct the mission.

The C-130s arrived at Desert One and began to ready refueling operations for the helicopters which were to arrive 20 minutes later. But due to the storm, they were late. Immediately problems arose because Desert One was on either side of a road.

A Ranger team and Delta operators set up security around the site and were immediately compromised. A bus full of Iranian civilians had to be stopped and detained as it was passing through, and a fuel truck was shot and destroyed with a LAW rocket when it refused to stop.

Arriving in ones and twos, all six helicopters were not on the ground at Desert One for an hour and a half. Right after shutting down its engines, Bluebeard 2 suffered a catastrophic failure of its hydraulic system, rendering it useless.

With no means of fixing it at Desert One, this left the team with just five operation helicopters. Could they have gone on with the barebones five? After consulting with Kyle and Seifert, Beckwith correctly decided that the mission would have to be scrubbed.

One thing the task force hadn’t rehearsed was an evacuation at Desert One. This is when the entire operation collapsed.

Disaster at Desert One:
When the decision was made to abandon the mission, one helicopter (Bluebeard 3) had to be moved to allow the C-130s to take off. Once aloft and hovering, the sand from the storm was blinding the Airman directing him and he began stepping backward. The pilot whose only frame of reference was the direction from the man on the ground thought he was drifting backward.

As he inched forward the rotor blades cut into Republic 4 on the ground. The blades ignited fuel and ammunition and created a fireball that incinerated the two aircraft and killed eight of crewmen on both aircraft.

CPT Harold L. Lewis Jr.    USAF EC-130E A/C Commander
CPT Lyn D. McIntosh    USAF EC-130E Pilot
CPT Richard L. Bakke    USAF EC-130E Navigator
CPT Charles McMillian    USAF EC-130E Navigator
TSGT Joel C. Mayo     USAF EC-130E Flight Engineer
SSG Dewey Johnson     USMC RH-53D Crewmember
SGT   John D. Harvey     USMC RH-53D Crewmember
CPL   George N. Holmes    USMC RH-53D Crewmember

Now the remaining operators, Rangers and aircraft crewmen packed into the remaining C-130s for the flight home. They released the Iranian civilians unharmed but in their haste, the helicopters weren’t scrubbed for sensitive data.

The next day on April 25, 1980, President Carter went on television to announce the failure of the raid and to take responsibility for it and not to place blame on anyone.

Aftermath, Lessons Learned:
The Pentagon and the government immediately after the botched attempt began to formulate plans, and procedures to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. The debacle at Desert One helped usher in a far stronger, better trained, and infinitely better coordinated Special Operations Force that we see today.

During hearings with the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Sam Nunn who was the chairman asked Colonel Beckwith first what he learned from the mission failure and what his recommendations were to prevent this from happening again.

Beckwith shot straight from the hip, “If coach Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama put his quarterback in Virginia, his backfield in North Carolina, his offensive line in Georgia and his defense in Texas and then got Delta Airlines to pick them up and fly them to Birmingham on game day, he wouldn’t have his winning teams.”

To prevent future mishaps, he stated, “My recommendation is to put together an organization that would include Delta, the Rangers, the Navy SEALs, Air Force pilots, its own staff, its own support people, its own aircraft and helicopters. Make this organization a permanent military unit. Allocate sufficient funds. And give it sufficient time to recruit, assess, and train its people,”

The issue of Joint Warfighting Doctrine and cooperation was fixed with Goldwater Nichols Act and also the Cohen – Dunn amendment that ushered in the Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in 1987. The first unified command for Special Operations. And the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, ensuring that Special Operations units have the bureaucracy behind them. And SOF units finally got Title 10 authority which gave them the ability to procure weapons and equipment independent of the services budgets.

The Army took the lead in the new doctrine and created the United States Army Special Operations Command which placed an umbrella of troops including Delta, Special Forces, Rangers, Psyops and Civil Affairs units under one organization.

Perhaps the most significant change was the creation of their own aviation element Special Operations Aviation, including the 160^th Aviation Regiment (Nightstalkers).

Some of the tactics that were used in 1980 that were new such as flying blacked-out, landings using night-vision goggles, remotely illuminated landing strips and methods for seizing airfields, as well as satellite communications are all second nature now to special operators.

The Air Force created their own Air Force Special Operations Command, (AFSOC) and created search and rescue units CSAR, combat controllers, Special Operations Air Wings which included AC-130 gunships.

The Navy’s US Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWARCOM) consists of Special Boat Units and SEAL Teams including SEAL Team 6 (DEVGRU) who conducted the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

The Marine Corps finally joined SOCOM in October 2005 and created the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC). The Marine special ops troops have renamed themselves the Raiders after their units of WWII.

While the Iran hostage rescue mission may have ended in failure, it opened the door a much better era for Special Operations Forces today. If the same mission was tasked to them today, there is no doubt, that the chances of success would be much higher.

Cover photo courtesy DOD