The Persian Paradox: USS MULLIGAN, #2

By Frederic W. Burr

"The Persian Paradox" is the sequel to "Old Salts, New Navy." Don DeFreese is now the Commanding Officer of the fictional USS Mulligan, one of the Navy's newest destroyers. The ship, having miraculously survived a near impact with a large meteorite the year before, is fresh out of overhaul, with its sophisticated Aegis Combat System fully operational.

As a ballistic missile defense ship, the Mulligan is part of a carrier strike group headed for the Mediterranean and Black Sea, with the ship acting as an air defense unit for the strike group during the transit. Shortly after inchopping to the Sixth Fleet, the Mulligan is dispatched to monitor Russian naval activity near the Libyan capital of Tripoli, and encounters Russian technology that threatens to neutralize its sophisticated Aegis systems.

As a result, the ship is detoured to Sicily to accommodate a visit from the Commander of the Navy's Sixth Fleet, Vice Admiral Jennifer Franklin herself. After debriefing the Admiral, and her staff, the Mulligan, along with an older destroyer, are dispatched to scout foreign shipping engaged in arms smuggling into Syria.

Iranian Commander Tehrani, the CO of the IS Bahadur, a newly commissioned destroyer, is also in the Mediterranean, and, unknown to Captain DeFreese, seeks to exact revenge over the death of his father at the hands of the US Navy during operation 'Praying Mantis,' when Tehrani was but a teenager.

Meanwhile, moderate elements of the Iranian regime are trying to engage the US State Department in constructing a bilateral approach to easing US sanctions, in exchange for unrestricted nuclear program transparency.

How these three narratives unfold will keep the reader turning pages late into the night.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederic W. Burr
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223381952

Frederic W. Burr

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Fred enlisted in the Navy at the age of seventeen, and retired in the rank of Commander in the surface warfare community. He is a graduate of the University of Louisville and the Albany Law School of Union University. Retiring from the private practice of law in upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Kentucky after thirty-six years, he considers himself a fully recovered attorney. Fred and his wife Donna (who also writes) make their home in Kentucky.

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Epigraph

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The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

13th Century Persian Poet

PROLOGUE

Iranian Navy Commander Abdalmatin Tehrani looked down at the gold stripes adorning the sleeves of his dress blue uniform in the privacy of his stateroom, still pleased with his recent promotion. If his mother, known to him only as mâmân, or his father Abdalbari, could have been here to see him installed as the commanding officer of the IS Bahadur, the first Persian Gulf-class destroyer of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN), the day would have been complete. He had been taught at an early age that Allah considered vanity and arrogance to be considered sinful. But was it arrogant or vain to know in truth that he was superior in every respect to those around him?

The ranks of sailors and marines in their dress uniforms made an impressive show, arrayed as they were on the pier for the formal commissioning of the Bahadur earlier that day. Built in secret at the Bandar-e Àbbās naval headquarters, and launched several years earlier, the Bahadur now carried Iranian-made Hoot (V-2) torpedoes (a reverse-engineered version of the Russian Shkval torpedo) and defensive gun systems. The ship’s electronic warfare sensors and countermeasures were state of the art. Eventually, it would be equipped with a medium multi-mission helicopter.

In addition to a domestic close-in weapons system (CIWS), the ship could launch up to four Qader sea-skimming anti-ship missiles from box launchers amidships, and four of the newer Mehrab surface to air missiles, with passive radar homing to defeat infrared jamming systems. Its navigation systems, tactical aviation and fire control radars, were also state of the art.

But he was most excited with the recently developed drone launcher that would allow his ship to launch swarms of drones in groups of ten. At launch, the drones themselves looked very much like a football. Once away from the launching platform, they deployed their rotors and were then able to receive instructions to attack targets in different formations. They had sufficient thrust to carry significant explosive payloads. Although the drone itself had a maximum theoretical range of 150 kilometers, control from the ship’s platform began to degrade significantly at 60 kilometers. This weapons system was still considered experimental, and the Bahadur was the only ship in the IRIN so equipped. He was anxious to see how it performed in a real-life situation.

The Bahadur was scheduled to make its first appearance on the world stage during the deployment of several ships of the IRIN by way of the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. Although some Western intelligence agencies were beginning to ferret out the existence of this new destroyer, none of them had yet stumbled on to its weapons systems or sensors.

His grandfather Cyrus used to regale young Abdalmatin with tales of the Persian Cossack Brigades, the historic foundation of the country’s armed forces, which were passed down to him by his father, also named Cyrus. Cyrus the older, which was how Abdalmatin thought of the great grandfather he never knew, was born before Persia became Iran in 1935, even before the people of Persia began using surnames in 1919.

As far back as Cyrus the older, the tradition of military service was well entrenched in the Tehrani family. His grandfather Cyrus served in the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, sacrificing his life in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War at the age of fifty.

Abdalmatin’s father, Abdalbari Tehrani, was born when Cyrus the younger was but a youth of eighteen years. When Abdalbari was twenty-five years of age, and serving in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN), Iran’s guerilla fleet operating in the Persian Gulf, baby Abdalmatin came into the world. He always looked back on his youth, growing up an only child in the beautiful village of Darakeh, northwest of Tehran, as the happiest time of his life. But it was not to last.

His father, having attained the rank of Senior Chief Petty Officer, was serving on the IS Joshan, a German-built fast attack boat, which attempted to engage the USS Wainwright (CG-28) in the opening days of the U.S. Navy’s operation Praying Mantis, by firing a radar-guided Harpoon missile from a range of fifteen miles. The missile passed harmlessly by the Wainwright, which responded with six smaller SM-1 missiles and, after closing with the Joshan, fired a barrage of five-inch shells. The Joshan sank with the loss of eleven crew, including Abdalmatin’s father, shortly after the boy’s fifteenth birthday in 1988.

Mâmân and he had to leave their home by the river in Evin Valley to take a small apartment in a less prosperous section of Tehran. As much as he missed walking the mountainside trails, and exploring the rushing streams and forests of the valley, he never returned to Darakeh.

Joining the teeming ranks of street vendors, the two of them managed to eke out a subsistence living, but they were not strangers to danger, police shakedowns, and desperate poverty. Many established street vendors had organized themselves into armed gangs, with knives and handguns being their weapons of choice. Seeking help from law enforcement was an eye-opening introduction to police corruption. Eventually, his mother had to hide their ‘stock’ of hair ties, used clothing and cheap trinkets Abdalmatin salvaged from trash heaps, under her clothes. It was the only way to evade law enforcement, and their incessant demands for protection money. During those years of privation and struggle, he swore to dedicate his life to avenging his father’s death at the hands of the American Navy.

The opportunity to prepare himself for that goal arose when he scored high on the annual Konkour examinations required to gain admission to higher education in Iran. His scores, and his family’s military history, gained him admission to the Imam Khomeini Naval Academy. He concentrated his studies in Naval Operations and Command of Ship, and after graduation, received warfare specific training at Iran’s Naval Technical Training Command.

The ensuing years were a challenge, but he successfully persevered, rising through the ranks to his present rank and position. Dedicated to his mission, he forswore marriage or family, considering his goal to be a gift from God. His instructors, and later his fellow officers, simply considered him reserved and taciturn to a fault.

And now, he was in command of the IS Bahadur, displacing 7,500 tons with a crew of 190. At 480 feet in length, and 60 feet at the beam, he knew his ship was smaller than the American Navy’s vaunted Rochefort class of destroyers. He was nevertheless confident his ship would give a good account of herself in any surface combat action.

For the most part, Tehrani remained aboard the Bahadur, or in quarters on base in the months preceding deployment. On those few occasions when he ventured into Tehran, primarily to conduct business at his bank, he took pains to dress down and eliminate anything that might suggest his military rank, or even affiliation with the regime.

Street protests against the government of Iran and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had turned violent, and the government’s response was increasingly lethal. Protestors were being shot dead in the streets from rooftops, helicopters, and close-range machine gun fire, even as they chanted, ‘Our military brothers, why do you kill your brother?’

By mid-morning, the nīrū-ye entezâmī-ye jomhūrī-ye eslâmī īrân, or NAJA, the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic, some 60,000 strong, would be patrolling the streets, corralling protestors, and picking out ringleaders for public hangings. Industrial cranes, with nylon rope dangling from them, would be looped around the victims’ necks. Then, the cranes would slowly haul the condemned into the air where they would kick and squirm until dead.

He knew the protests were the result of the devastating impact on the Iranian economy from sanctions imposed by America and the European Union. But he held little sympathy for the protestors, believing them to be gangsters, or people easily influenced by foreign state actors. Public executions of ringleaders and saboteurs were in his mind an effective deterrent. To avoid being caught up in a protest, or the aftermath of one, he simply confined his infrequent forays into Tehran to the early morning hours.

As he did whenever leaving his stateroom, he softly read aloud the framed statement of his late father’s old commander, the Commander of the IRGC Navy, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, hanging on the inside of his stateroom door. It is natural that we always conduct training, drills, and exercises for confrontation with the operational goals we have, and the Americans and the entire world knows that one of the IRGC Navy’s operational goals is to destroy America’s Navy.

Inshallah, God willing, he thought, the world will come to respect the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, and the American Navy will bleed.

ONE

CDR Donald DeFreese was in deep REM slumber when the speaker over his bunk sounded.

"Captain. Captain?"

He squinted his eyes two or three times and shook his head to clear his sight, and his mind, before sitting up. The face of the Bakelite Navy clock on his bulkhead, illuminated in red night vision light, informed him it was approaching 0300. Almost four hours sleep, he thought. Not bad!

He turned the speaker volume down a click before answering. Yes, I’m awake. What is it?

This is the OOD. We have a probable Russian spy ship broad on our port beam, about four miles out. Recommend you come to the bridge.

Knowing LT(jg)Tamicka Roberts was one of the Mulligan’s more seasoned OODs, if she recommended he come to the bridge, it was essential that he do so. When not on deck, she was the Gunnery Officer, the ship’s Legal Officer, Intelligence Officer and recently qualified as Tactical Action Officer, meaning she had mastered command of every individual system in the ship and proven herself capable of combining that experience into one complex job.

In the event of a surface engagement, she was one of two officers who would sit next to him or the XO in Combat Information Center on a rotating basis. The TAO would recommend not only control of the ship’s navigation, sensors and propulsion, but also weapons employment to whoever occupied the command seat, and would assume command in the event of a disability or injury. Her quiet confidence never failed to impress him, especially considering her background.

Growing up in a single parent household in Hell’s Kitchen, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in New York City, she had the good fortune of being raised by a strict God-fearing mother. Her mother instilled in young Tamicka, at an early age, a sense of honesty, personal responsibility, and hard work, especially when it came to academics.

She had never known a father figure, but saw the entire range of African American male behavior, ranging from her grandfather to the black gangs controlling areas of Hell’s Kitchen and the neighboring Chelsea. Originally thinking of becoming a prosecutor, she applied to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and qualified for a full ride scholarship. She looked forward to law school after graduation. But when her mother lost her lifelong battle with sickle cell, bereft and disillusioned, Tamicka decided she had had enough of classrooms; she wanted to make a dramatic change in her life.

On a whim, she applied for Navy OCS after graduation. Her career as a junior officer in the Navy was meteoric. She came to the Mulligan right after completing the Air and Missile Defense course at Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS), having already undergone her initial forty-month sea tours. She was in the zone for LT with the selection board scheduled to meet in three months. At the end of this deployment, she would be ready for a shore tour. For now, she was comfortable with her knowledge of the ship, and her position as TAO should anything serious hit the fan.

Captain DeFreese quickly splashed water on his face and, looking in