EPILOGUE 2020
‘My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a plane. His son will ride a camel.’ – An Arab saying.
Sunday evening - 19 January 2020 – Larak Island – Persian Gulf
Jon Driscoll sitting on the rooftop of his newly erected residence, a two-story white villa on the southwest of Larak Island, sipping his favorite Bombay Sapphire Gin gazes out towards the Straits of Hormuz in the distance separating the Persian Gulf from the sea of Oman. While observing an occasional fishing boat or two sailing carelessly in the pristine waters, where the most exotic variety of marine fauna can be found, he lets the serenity of it all sink in for a moment.
Clyde McGuire, his friend and benefactor for the past three years, walks up the stairs to the roof to join him for an evening drink before supper. Clyde had been traveling all day. He had taken Singapore Airlines flight that morning from his second home in Singapore to Karachi in Pakistan via Bangkok and transited to Kabul by PIA that afternoon. By 4:00 pm he had been transferred to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul by U.S. military personnel stationed in Afghanistan and had boarded the C-130 Hercules, the USAF transport plane and flown to Naval Support Activity - NSA Command Center on Larak Island in the Persian Gulf. He was a guest of the newly decorated Rear Admiral Jon Bourbon Driscoll, the Commanding Officer of NSA Larak.
After a quick shower and a change of clothes Clyde climbs up a few stairs to the roof ‘What a majestic view from up here, Admiral,’ observing the sunset in the horizon cast a pacific shadow on the clear blue-green waters of the Persian Gulf, as he walks up to the round beach table and deposits his tired frame into the empty chair next to Jon, ‘It’s a far cry from the events of the recent past, isn’t it?’
‘Hah, that’s an understatement!’ exclaims Jon and then tersely and extemporaneously he squints his eyes looking far into the cool evening waters of the gulf, with Clyde following his gaze, towards an Arabian humpback whale which had just surfaced and was spouting out its blowhole. Jon Driscoll reminiscing, in a flash, the game-changing events which began three years ago to date on 19 January 2017, proclaims emphatically, ‘Thar she blows!’
Captain Jon B. Driscoll, the previous commanding officer of NSA Bahrain was recently elevated to the rank of Rear Admiral of the U.S. Navy, for his excellent job during the Operation Praying Mantis II monitoring the war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and posted to NSA Larak now under the control of the United States Navy.
After the devastating war of Iran and Saudi Arabia had ended and the dust settled, in December of 2019 the sparsely inhabited island of Larak Island, a military outpost of the previous regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was converted to a full-fledged military installation of the U.S. Navy and Air Force. The entire 5th Fleet which was previously deployed at NSA Bahrain was now located at NSA Larak. It shared a commander and headquarters with U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), with the area of responsibility (AOR) of NSA Larak and the U.S. Fifth Fleet now encompassing about 3 million square miles of water area including the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Ships in the now extended U.S. 5th Fleet naval forces included three aircraft carriers, 35 ships and patrol boats, 150 strike aircrafts, approximately 25,000 sailors and marines, all now stationed on Larak Island for patrolling its AOR as a backup for the peace-keeping coalition forces stationed in the region, now mostly threat-free and without much traffic of oil tankers or cargo container ships traversing the Persian Gulf.
In the aftermath of Iran Saudi War, the Middle East as we knew it, ceased to exist!!! The Middle Eastern countries had all but disintegrated!!!
’All the scaffolding of wealth and power built on petrodollars over a century had fallen, as a ruined edifice, before one single word ‘FAITH’ … The Faith of Islam.’
In the war of Shia versus Sunni … between the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran and the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … All was lost in the Middle East.
In the UAE: Dubai Downtown, Harbour, Marina and the Mall of the World were all in ruins, Burj Khalifa and Burj Al Arab no longer existed. Atlantis had sunk underwater and the entire Palm Jumeirah Island had crumbled into the sea. In Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Emirates Palace, and Etihad Towers were all heaps of twisted steel and crushed concrete.
In Saudi Arabia: King’s Palace in Riyadh had been completely demolished and the Kingdom Center Tower obliterated; King Fahd Causeway Bridge—one of the longest in the world connecting Al Khobar to Bahrain had been destroyed.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran: The string of oil, gas and petrochemical refineries in Assaluyeh had been pulverized. Mosalla Grand Mosque in northern Tehran was a big hole in the ground.
Millions of people were dead and tens of millions more sought refuge in the nearby countries of Egypt, Jordan and Sudan…escaping from Saudi Arabia, and those millions fleeing Islamic Iran took refuge in Georgia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan, since European and American borders had been closed shut to Muslim Refugees since late-2017.
Year 2020 was the ultimate exodus of the century
The Sykes-Picot 100-year-old agreement, from the division of Ottoman Empire to the New World Order of Bush era and the New Middle East map of Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters presented to the world in 2006 had finally been executed. The redrawing of the countries’ borders in the Middle East was complete … the Fifth Objective - a New World Order emerged. Mission Accomplished … by 2020!!!
