Iran fast-boat swarms add to Hormuz threats for shipping

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would not use a nuclear weapon in the war against Iran.

“Why would I use a nuclear weapon? We’ve totally, in a very conventional way, decimated them without it,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked whether he would use such a weapon.

“No, I wouldn’t use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody,” he added.

“There’s nothing worse than a nuclear weapon that takes out cities, destroys the Middle East, or creates a nuclear holocaust in Europe.”

Asked how long he was willing to wait for a long-term peace deal with Iran, Trump said, “Don’t rush me.”

He said Iran might have loaded up their weaponry “a little bit” during the two-week ceasefire, but added that the US military could knock that out in about one day.

“Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft is gone …maybe they loaded up a little bit during the two-week hiatus, but we’ll knock that out about one day, if they did,” Trump added.

“I want to make the best deal. I could make a deal right now … but I don’t want to do that. I want to have it everlasting,” Trump said.

“I want a great deal where our nation and the world is safe from lunatics with nuclear weapons.”

Iran fast-boat swarms add to Hormuz threats for shipping

Iran’s use of a swarm of small, fast boats to seize two container ships near the Strait of Hormuz undermines suggestions that US forces have ​disabled its naval capabilities.

US President Donald Trump on Monday acknowledged that ‌while Iran’s conventional navy had been largely destroyed, its “fast-attack ships” had not been considered much of a threat.

He said any such vessels coming near a US blockade set up outside the strait would be “immediately ELIMINATED” using the “same system of kill” deployed in the Caribbean and Pacific, where US air strikes have hit suspected drug boats and killed at least 110 people.

Those boats were not attacking large, unarmed commercial ships, however, ​nor nearly as heavily armed, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards sporting heavy machineguns, rocket launchers and, in some cases, anti-ship missiles.

Read: Edge of a deal or slide to conflict?

Speedboat attacks now form part of a “layered system ​of threats,” alongside “shore-based missiles, drones, mines and electronic interference to create uncertainty and slow decision-making,” Greek maritime security company Diaplous told Reuters.

Iran ⁠was estimated to have hundreds, if not thousands, of these boats before the war, often hidden in coastal tunnels, naval bases or among civilian vessels, according to maritime security specialists.

Some 100 ​or more may have been destroyed since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, said Corey Ranslem, chief executive of maritime security group Dryad Global.

Israel and Lebanon on Thursday agreed to extend their ceasefire by three weeks after a high-level meeting between representatives of both countries in the White House Oval Office, Trump announced on social media.

“I look forward in the near future to hosting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun. It was a Great Honor to be a participant at this very Historic Meeting!” Trump said.

Change in tactics

Before this week, Iran ​had relied on missile and drone strikes to hit shipping traffic around the strait, a route which normally handles 20% of the world’s daily oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

Those attacks had stopped with the April 8 ceasefire.

The seizure of the two container ships by Iran followed Washington’s imposition of a blockade on Iran’s trade by sea and the start of it intercepting Iran-linked oil tankers and other ships.

“The civilian shipping industry ​is not equipped to prevent Iranian armed forces from seizing vessels,” said Daniel Mueller, a senior analyst at British maritime security company Ambrey.

Typically, about a dozen boats are used ​in a seizure operation, he added.

Iran’s fast boats now serve as the “backbone” of Iran’s naval strategy, able to deploy rapidly as part of its “asymmetrical war against the enemy,” a senior Iranian security official told ‌Reuters.

“Because of ⁠their very high speeds, these boats can successfully carry out hit-and-run attacks without being detected,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Fast boat limitations

Including this week’s seizures, Iran has used small, fast boats at least seven times going back to 2019, Ambrey’s Mueller said.

High winds and swells in the waters off Iran during summer make it hard to conduct such operations, said one Iranian shipping source familiar with the waters.

“When it is very bumpy, they (armed forces onboard) cannot shoot,” the source said.

They are also ill-equipped to go head-to-head with a ​warship, and would likely suffer “very heavy casualties” ​in any direct assault on one, said ⁠Jeremy Binnie, a Middle East specialist at defence intelligence company Janes.

“Even if they tried to saturate the ship’s defences by attacking from multiple directions, they would be extremely vulnerable to the air support that would be called in,” he said.

On paper, guided missile strikes would easily ​destroy these boats, but shoulder-fired missile launchers would pose a threat to low-flying US aircraft, Binnie said.

“It is going to be ​much harder to eliminate ⁠the small boat threat than it was to destroy Iran’s larger naval vessels, which were big targets that were relatively easy to find and track and, at most, only had a limited ability to defend themselves from air attack,” he said.

The reality for the shipping sector is further disruption as well as elevated insurance costs.

After the so-called “tanker war” of the 1980s, Iran increasingly used asymmetric ⁠tactics as ​the Iranian navy was effectively destroyed, much as it has been in the current conflict, said Duncan Potts, ​a director with consultancy Universal Defence and Security Solutions and a former British Royal Navy vice admiral.

“When the US Navy and the president say, ‘We’ve destroyed the navy, we’ve sunk a frigate off Sri Lanka’ – you’ve done that ​before, but you’ve forgotten that your opposition here went asymmetric. And they’ve perfected it.”