US launches task force to disrupt land transit routes into Iran

WASHINGTON: The United States military has announced it will create a 20-member task force to find ways to disrupt land routes into Iran that it says are used for shipments of weapons and illicit materials.

The restrictions would expand on a US naval blockade of Iranian ports during the two countries' eight-month war, in which Tehran has also restricted passage through the critical Strait of Hormuz trade route, choking global energy supplies.

The task force's work "will further constrain Iran's ability to finance terrorism, rebuild weapons factories, and replenish their military," US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper said in a statement posted on X on Saturday (Nov 7).

The team of both civilian and military personnel based in Florida would coordinate with US government agencies on "preventing the movement of advanced weapons systems, dual-use technologies, sanctioned materials, and illegal revenue streams across Iran's land borders and the Caspian Sea," the statement added.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Washington's latest bid "will fail" and will not bring about economic collapse in the Islamic republic.

"The United States will never be able to impose the economic blockade it is pursuing and proposing under various names and through different plans," Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi said, according to Fars news agency.

"The Americans will not achieve their objective of exerting extreme economic pressure to bring about the collapse and disintegration of Iran's economy."

Mohebi added that the US would be "powerless to block" communication channels between Iran and neighbouring countries.

CENTCOM said that the naval blockade on Iranian ports had "prevented Iran from exporting more than US$25 billion in crude oil."

In August, Washington announced what it called an "economic asphyxiation" campaign on Iran aimed at strangling its already battered economy.

Those measures were in response to Tehran's blockade of the Hormuz strait, where Iranian forces have regularly targeted vessels that attempted to cross without authorisation.