• China brings its first aircraft carrier into service, joining 9-nation club

    AP

    China's first aircraft carrier is decorated with colored flags at a shipyard in Dalian in northeast China's Liaoning province Monday.

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    China brought its first aircraft carrier into service Tuesday, raising the country’s military capability amid heightened tensions with its regional neighbors.

    Christened Liaoning -- after the port where the carrier was significantly overhauled after being bought from Ukraine -- this new addition to China’s navy is not large compared to America’s super carriers, but could still potentially have an impact on territorial disputes in the region.

    “The aircraft carrier will play an important role in China's settlement of islands disputes and defense of its maritime rights and interests,” said Chinese naval expert, Li Jie, in an interview with Chinese newspaper, People’s Daily.   

    The rest of China’s state media also played up the significance of the Liaoning, with the China News Service writing that the Liaoning would have “far-reaching influence on protecting China’s territory, safety and development and to make the world more peaceful.”

    Taiwanese ships clash with Japanese coast guard over disputed islands

    The commissioning of the ship is a huge display of national prestige, elevating China to the nine-nation club of carrier-equipped navies.

    Presided over by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, the unveiling of the Liaoning also comes just before a once-a-decade leadership change in China, during which a new generation of top leaders will be introduced.

    China's Ministry of Defense welcomed the new ship, declaring that it would "raise the overall operational strength of the Chinese navy" and help Beijing to "effectively protect national sovereignty, security and development interests."

    Japanese coast guard ships shoot water cannon at Taiwanese fishing boats in the East China Sea in a territorial dispute. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    The ship’s full capabilities remain unknown at this point, but the size of the Liaoning and China’s relative lack of technical experience with carrier operations suggests that it will serve more as a training vessel then a deployable ship for combat operations.

    The carrier can reportedly hold a compliment of 30 fixed-wing fighters compared to the much larger American Nimitz class carriers than can carry around 90 aircraft.

    China’s normally nationalistic newspaper, Global Times, warned yesterday that the Liaoning “does not have the capacity to handle its tasks as it needs more adaptation to enhance its fighting capacity.”

    Japan infuriates China by buying disputed isles

    Still, the Global Times and other Chinese media were quick to link the launching of the Liaoning with the ongoing tensions around the region. 

    Japan has been locked in a bitter spat with China over ownership of islands claimed by both countries.

    The Japanese central government’s move this month to purchase the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, from their private owner led to heated nationwide protests in China that forced many Japanese companies like Panasonic, Toyota and Canon to suspend operations. 

    Much at stake for US as tensions rise in troubled China Seas

    While the protests have subsided, tensions have remained heightened. Just this week, China’s Vice Foreign Minister, Z|hang Zhijun told his Japanese counterpart, "China will never tolerate any bilateral actions by Japan that harm Chinese territorial sovereignty… Japan must banish illusions, undertake searching reflection and use concrete actions to amend its errors, returning to the consensus and understandings reached between our two countries' leaders."

    Chinese protesters: 'The Diaoyu islands belong to China!'

    Japanese embassy officials in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Liaoning and ongoing territorial issues.

    Tokyo has known for years about China’s aircraft carrier ambitions, but now must deal with the blowback of this announcement with an increasingly concerned and nationalist home audience.

    With Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda poised to call for new elections later this year, he can ill afford to look weak on Chinese intransigence in the East China Sea.

    Emotional anniversary reignites anti-Japan protests in China

    The odds of war breaking out between the two largest Asian economies remain remote, but there have been clashes in the waters around the Diaoyu islands, with Chinese and now Taiwanese fishing ships entering the island chain’s territorial waters, a move the Japanese view as an intrusion on their territory. 

    Though the Liaoning was formally named Tuesday, the carrier has actually been decades in the making. The ship was built at a Ukrainian shipyard in 1988 and dubbed the Varyag. It was purchased a decade later by China and retrofitted.

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  • Iran warns US carrier to stay out of Persian Gulf

    Iran warned U.S. aircraft carrier Stennis not to return to the Persian Gulf, but U.S. officials rejected the threat. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski has more.

    By msnbc.com news services

    Updated at 1:37 p.m. ET:

    Reuters reports White House officials said Iran's threat to take action if a U.S. aircraft carrier moves into the Gulf showed Tehran was increasingly isolated internationally, faced economic problems from to sanctions and wants to divert attention from its deepening problems.

    "It reflects the fact that Iran is in a position of weakness," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday.

    Earlier:

    Iran will take action if a U.S. aircraft carrier which left the area because of Iranian naval exercises returns to the Gulf, the state news agency quoted army chief Ataollah Salehi as saying on Tuesday.

    "Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf," Salehi told IRNA.

    "I advise, recommend and warn them (the Americans) over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Salehi as saying.

    Salehi did not name the aircraft carrier or give details of the action Iran might take if it returned. However, last week a spokeswoman for the U.S. 5th Fleet said the USS John C. Stennis had left the Gulf.

    Iran completed 10 days of naval exercises in the Gulf on Monday, and said during the drills that if foreign powers imposed sanctions on its crude exports it could shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's traded oil is shipped.

    The U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, said it would not allow shipping to be disrupted in the strait.

    Iran fires missiles
    Iran said on Monday it had successfully test-fired two long-range missiles during its naval drill, flexing its military muscle in the face of mounting Western pressure over its controversial nuclear program.

    Iran also said it had no intention of closing the Strait of Hormuz but had carried out "mock" exercises on shutting the strategic waterway.

    Iran announces a nuclear fuel breakthrough and test-fires a new surface-to-air missile in the Gulf on Sunday. NBC's Kate Snow reports.

    Tehran denies Western accusations that it is secretly trying to build atomic bombs, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

    The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve the Islamic state's nuclear row with the West.

    The European Union is considering following the United States in banning imports of Iranian crude oil. U.S. President Barack Obama signed new sanctions against Iran into law on Saturday, stepping up the pressure by adding sanctions on financial institutions that deal with Iran's central bank.

     

    Meanwhile, Iran said the new record low of the national currency to the U.S. dollar was not linked to the latest sanctions from the United States targeting the country's central bank.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Tuesday insisted there "is no relation" between the two. He said the American sanctions "have yet to be put into practice."

    The Iranian currency's exchange rate hovered late Monday around 18,000 riyals to the dollar, marking a roughly 12 percent slide compared to Sunday's rate of 15,900 riyals to the dollar.

    President Barack Obama on Saturday signed into law a bill targeting Iran's central bank as part of the West's efforts to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program. It goes into effect in six months.

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    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.