The Iranian ships, however, have been blocked by the American fleet and are unable to enter the canal. Debkafile has some interesting details. Their report closes with this:
By positioning the Enterprise opposite Iran's 12th Flotilla at the Red Sea entrance to the Suez Canal on Feb. 17 Washington has confronted Tehran with a hard dilemma, which was practically spelled out by US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley a day earlier: "If the ships move through the canal, we will evaluate what they actually do," he said. "It's not really about the ships. It's about what the ships are carrying, what's their destination, what's the cargo on board, where's it going, to whom and for what benefit."It looks like the Iranian vessels will either have to turn back or submit to an American inspection. Either course of action will be humiliating for the Iranians. Too bad.
This was the US spokesman's answer to the debkafile disclosure of Feb. 16 that the Kharg was carrying long-range surface missiles for Hizballah. It raised the possibility that the moment they venture to sail into the Suez Canal, the two Iranian warships will be boxed in between the Enterprise and the Kearsarge and called upon to allow their cargoes to be inspected as permitted by the last round of UN sanctions against Iran in the case of suspicious war freights.
According to debkafile's intelligence sources, the flurry of conflicting statements from Cairo and Tehran [about whether the Iranian ships had actually transited the canal or not] were issued to muddy the situation surrounding the Iranian flotilla and cloud Tehran's uncertainty about how to proceed. The next date announced for their passage, Tuesday night, Feb. 22, will be a testing moment.
