US Navy to offer cash for tips on smugglers in Arabian Gulf

TDT | Manama                                             

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Staff Reporter

The US Navy plans to offer up to $100,000 in cash for tips leading to the seizure of weapons, drugs and other smuggled goods in the Arabian Gulf, Stars and Stripes reported.

The expected announcement of the programme today comes about a week before President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East, where regional tensions persist over Iran’s possible ambitions for nuclear weapons and its arming of rebel groups.

The Fifth Fleet, based in Manama, Bahrain, is specifically looking for tips on people smuggling illegal weapons or illicit narcotics, as well as information on people planning attacks on US forces, a spokesman for Naval Forces Central Command was quoted by a Stars and Stripes reporter.

“By adding this incentive to voluntarily report tips, we think this can enhance our awareness and vigilance of what’s happening in the waters of the region,” Cmdr Timothy Hawkins, NAVCENT and Fifth Fleet spokesman, told Stars and Stripes.

This is the first time that the Fifth Fleet is opting into a military program used in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to trade money for information, Hawkins said. The US Navy says that militant attacks and weapons seizures have increased in recent years in the busy shipping lanes of the Middle East.

Iran has been accused of transfers of rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen, despite a United Nations Security Council arms embargo. The Fifth Fleet intercepted 9,000 weapons last year, three times the number seized in 2020, US Fifth Fleet commander Vice Adm Brad Cooper told Stars and Stripes in April.

“In the region, the most serious threat is Iran,” Cooper said in an interview. Iran and the various armed groups that it backs have also been accused of seizing ships, laying mines, and launching rockets at a US guided-missile destroyer in Yemen as well as oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.

In an incident last month, a US Navy warship shot warning flares at Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboats that buzzed within 50 yards of it in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The Fifth Fleet will offer the rewards through the Department of Defense Rewards Programme, which means that US citizens are not eligible for the program, Hawkins said.

Tipsters could receive their award from the Navy in cash or items such as boats or food, Hawkins said. The Fifth Fleet will be responsible for vetting the tips, which can be sent either via a website or a phoneline operated by Arabic, English and Farsi speakers, Hawkins said.

The US military’s attempts at gaining information via cash rewards in Afghanistan and Iraq continually ran into serious issues, said Jonathan Schroden, a military operations analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses.

These programmes often had tipsters providing false information in an attempt to get the US military to arrest their rivals, often did not have enough resources to keep up with the volume of tips, and sometimes did not lead to results, Schroden said. “If you’re not able to mitigate these challenges, your tip line will become useless or at worst counterproductive,” Schroden said.