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From: B-Haile (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Fri May 14 2010 - 21:29:51 EDT
The Arkenstone
Amateur Blog About Iranian Defense Issues
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Iran's Military Relationship with Eritrea
?
Eritrea is a relative new-comer to Irans foreign relations community, as they, up until recently, close allies of the US and other western powers, however as their former allies turned to their arch-enemy Ethiopia as well as supporting Djibouti in recent border conflicts as well as blaming the rise of insurgents in these countries on Eritrea. As a response, they have turned to alternate parties to seek assistance from.
The relations between the two countries were spearheaded by a May 2008 meeting between Iranian president Ahmadinejad and his Eritrean counterpart, Afwerki, in Tehran. During which, according to Afwerki, a groundwork for the establishment of "..mutual investment in the agriculture, industry and energy sectors and regional and international cooperation' He added that the two countries shared common views on the regional and global issues, the hegemonic system's performance and ways to resist the hegemony. (1) This was cemented later the same year in September when a memorandum of understanding was signed supporting Iranian investment in Eritrea. In addition to this, the 'Export Development Bank of Iran' gave $35 million to Eritrea to help finance trade relations. (2) One of the payoff's of these deals was seen in June of 2009 when Afwerki publicly supported Iran's nuclear ambitions. (3) It was also seen when Iran was asked to mediate the continuing disputes between Eritrea and Djibouti due to its good relations with both countries, but this will be discussed in full in the Djibouti section.
Near the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, the latest buzz on Iranian foreign relations was that they were stationing a military base in Eritrea, but how reliable is this information? If it was true it would represent a significant increase in Iran's ability to hamstring the world oil supplies as they would now have control over not just Hormuz, but the Red Sea as well. The truth however is far less tantalizing. In November of 2008, a prominent Eritrean opposition group, the EDP or Eritrean Democratic, came out with news that Iran planned to revamp an ex-Soviet built oil refinery based out of the town of southern town of Assab, located close to the Djiboutian border. (4) This story then escalated throughout the internet, being reposted and embellished upon. Before long the story included tales of Iranian submarines moving legions of IRGC troops as well as long range ballistic missiles and SAM's. For instance a few days later, the 'Sudan Tribune" jumped on this bandwagon, referencing the same Selfi-Democracy article as saying that Iran had deployed submarines, troops and ballistic missiles to Assab, information that was nowhere in the original report. (5) This was picked up and spread by none other then the NCRI, the National Council for Resistance of Iran who then proposed the SAM batteries as well as the explicit mention of the Quds force and other IRGC elements, their reference? (6) You guessed it, the same Selfi-Democracy article that spurred the other articles, the same one that didn't mention one word about a military presence, to say nothing of the institutional bias an opposition group would have against the Eritrean government as well as their lack of credible sources. In the end, while it is certainly conceivable that Iran would station missiles or mines in the port town of Assab, there is no hard evidence that this is the case. This position was confirmed by a May 2009 announcement by the Eritrean government, saying they were disinformation campaigns by Israel. (7)
One possible update though that could potentially throw my whole belief off balance is a report by Radio France International, or RFI, in May of 2009 that possibly relates evidence on how Iranian submarines were actually observed in port as well as the Pasdaran being moved in, during 2009, rather then the previous observation indicating they were already there.. I say possibly because the original article was in French and since I was forced to use a translation tool, which are always shady to say the least. To top it off, I had to 'interpret' the translation, converting it from broken English to what I believe the article was trying to convey. (8) On the whole though this is very dubious and is very likely to just be a mistranslation or using the same evidence as the other articles. I consider the actual observance of an Iranian submarine in Eritrea to be a very slim possibility. Another possible problem came when Israelis reported that the two cruisers, the IRIS Naghdi and Alborz, sent to fight pirates in the Gulf of Aden were stationed at Assab for an indeterminate amount of time. But again this news does come from Israeli sources as well as the fact that they were at the port does not mean anything by itself other then they were there for resupply. (9)
Slightly more recently however the rumours have been about the smuggling of arms from Iran, through intermediaries to the Palestinian territories. While the issue is mostly focused on Sudan's role in the process as they are obviously the most prominent party, there has also been talk of Eritrea's participation. Israeli sources suspect the two ships (named above) that were sent to fight pirates in the Gulf of Aden and that were docked in Assab also unloaded shipments of weapons that would later be smuggled up through Egypt. (10) Also of note is that during the attack by Israelis on the arms convoys travelling through the desert, many Eritreans were killed indicating the possibility that the weapons shipment was first offloaded in Eritrea, then travelled through Sudan rather then originating from Port Sudan (11) Of course, this was predictably denied by Eritrean officials saying that ties between Iran and Eritrea were not as close as everyone claimed. (12)
http://thearkenstone.blogspot.com/2010/03/irans-military-relationship-with_06.html