Israel Silent as Iranian Ships Transit Suez Canal
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 06:07PM NY TIMES
Israeli leaders maintained a tense silence on Tuesday over reports that two Iranian Navy ships had passed through the Suez Canal and entered the Mediterranean en route to Syria, a move described by officials here as a provocation.
An Israeli government official said Tuesday that the development constituted a “new footprint in the region” for Iran. He added that given the Iranian-backed presence to Israel’s north, in the form of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to the south, with Hamas in Gaza, the episode is of great concern to Israel. The official was not authorized to speak about the issue publicly.
The Iranian vessels were not expected to enter Israeli territorial waters, but their journey from the exit of the Suez Canal to Syria would still take them closer to Israel than such warships have been before. Israel has said that it will carefully monitor the ships’ movements.
In a message that was unlikely to placate the Israelis, the Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA, reported Tuesday that the vessels were to dock in a Syrian port “within the framework of brotherly meetings between the two countries.” Citing an unidentified “informed source,” it said that such visits of navies to friendly countries were “quite usual” and aimed at promoting “bilateral cooperation.”
This was the first time that Iranian naval ships have traversed the Suez Canal since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the Iranian news agency said.
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