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home.
                 “The Khomeini carrier group must be made
fully operational and deployed immediately to the Gulf of Oman to screen for
foreign warships,” Buzhazi went on. “As we have seen, even with proper warning,
it still takes far too long for land-based aircraft to respond to an attack on
the islands—only the carrier can properly defend the islands against very
low-altitude attackers.”
                 “The
Chinese aircraft carrier? The rusting piece of flotsam in the harbor at Chah
Bahar?” Khamenei said scornfully. “I thought we were using that to house the
Chinese advisers, prisoners, Basij volunteers, and jihad members working on the
base-construction project.”
                “The Khomeini is operational, and it is ready to help defend our
rights,” Buzhazi said. “We have a full complement of sailors, fliers, and
weapons aboard, and the carrier’s escort vessels are also ready to set sail. I
had ordered the carrier to Abu Musa Island to assist with island defenses, but
as all of our military forces, they were unprepared for this treacherous
attack.”
                 The
Ayatollah Khamenei paused to consider that request. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini aircraft-carrier project had been a
pie- in-the-sky project from the very beginning. The Russian aircraft carrier Varyag had been laid up at Nikolayev,
Ukraine, since 1991, completely stripped of all essential combat systems; it
had no radar, no communications, no aircraft, no weapons, only its nuclear
power plant, a flight deck, and more than three thousand watertight
compartments. The People’s Republic of China had purchased the 60,000 ton
vessel and made it an operational warship, but the world’s political
consternation at China owning and operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
in the fragile South China Sea and Sea of Japan region had been too great—if
China had a carrier, Japan wanted five, and the United States wanted to base
five more in the region—so those plans were shelved.
                 At
the time, Iran had concluded a $2 billion arms deal with China, and relations
between those two countries had been at an alltime high. The carrier had been
moved to Iran’s new military and oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman called Chah
Bahar, where it had once again been laid up in floating storage. No definite
plans had emerged for the ship: some said it was to be cut up as scrap, then as
a floating hotel, then as a floating prison.
                 General
Buzhazi had other ideas. Over the next eighteen months, the Iranians had begun
to install new, relatively modern weapon systems on board the ship, including
Russian anti-ship missiles, Russian aircraft, and state-of-the-art sensors and
equipment from all over the world—all the while insisting to the world that
they were “experimenting” or “assisting” China with its plans to convert the carrier for
other uses. Then Iranian MiG-29 and Sukhoi-33 fighter crews had begun
practicing carrier landings. Since early 1996, both Chinese and Iranian crews
had been training aboard the Varyag in carrier deck and flight operations in the Persian Gulf. At the same time,
Chinese and Iranian crews had begun firing anti-ship missiles from the carrier,
including the huge SS-N-19 Granit supersonic missile, which was designed to
sink a carrier-class ship over 200 miles away. In effect, both countries shared
the cost of a completely combat-ready aircraft carrier.
                 “This
aircraft carrier, it is ready to fight?” Khamenei asked.
                 “It
is, Eminence,” Buzhazi replied. “Twenty fighter aircraft, six helicopters,
twelve long-range anti-ship missiles—it is one of the most formidable warships
in the world. With our new Russian, Chinese, and Western surplus warships as
escorts, the Khomeini can ensure that
we will not lose our rights to the Persian Gulf.”