Overnight Defense: Iran detains two Navy ships

THE TOPLINE: Iran took two small U.S. Navy ships into custody Tuesday, along with the 10 sailors manning the ship.

A senior defense official said two U.S. Navy riverine craft were going from Kuwait to Bahrain when they encountered Iranian military vessels.

“They ran into some type of an issue, and were picked up by the Iranian craft,” the official said, who added the issue is not yet understood.

{mosads}”Subsequently, U.S. and Iranian government officials have discussed the situation and negotiated their transit,” the official said.

“They’re being allowed to continue their journey,” said the official, who did not want to characterize whether they were being escorted by the Iranian vessels.

The incident comes just hours before President Obama delivers his final State of the Union address, which he hopes to use to tout legacy items including the nuclear deal with Iran.

Iran is just days away from receiving certification that it has met its obligations under the nuclear pact, opening the door to billions of dollars in sanctions relief.

HOUSE VOTES FOR NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS: The House easily approved legislation Tuesday to enhance sanctions against North Korea a week after the country claimed it detonated a hydrogen bomb.

The measure, passed 418-2, would block North Korea’s access to hard currency as well as sanction financial institutions and individuals that aid the country’s missile proliferation. Companies that send luxury goods to North Korea would also be subject to sanctions.

Under the bill, the president would be authorized to prevent any sanctioned foreign person from entering the U.S. Any entity facilitating North Korea’s policies would further be prohibited from entering into contracts with the U.S. government.

Lawmakers said the sanctions cutting off North Korea’s access to hard currency would send a warning shot to Kim Jong-Un’s dictatorship. 

“Congress must send the message to the Kim regime that they can either reform and disarm or the system can implode,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.). “Without hard currency, without being able to pay the generals, that system would implode.”

The Senate is expected to consider similar legislation in the coming weeks.

EX-OFFICIALS URGE MORE AIRPOWER AGAINST ISIS: The United States can step up its airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) without increasing collateral damage, the former under secretary of Defense for intelligence said Tuesday.

“One of the things you see in these campaigns is that [while] collateral damage is obviously a critical concern, it does not go up linearly with the intensity of strikes,” said Michael Vickers, who was the under secretary from 2011 to 2015. “You occasionally make mistakes, and so you have that 1 percent where, no matter how hard we tried, we’re not perfect. But there’s not this correlation by a factor of 10.”

Vickers made his remarks during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, where he, along with the former acting director of the CIA and the former U.S. ambassador to Syria recommended ways to ramp up the campaign against ISIS.

The Obama administration has been criticized for having rules of engagement that are more restrictive than the law of war in an effort to avoid any civilian casualties.

Vickers compared the air campaign against ISIS to the one against al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. During that time, he said, there were about eight times more strike sorties, but not significantly more collateral damage.

“We’re in generally a precision world right now,” he said. “So I think that we can responsibly intensify the air campaign. Because, as you said, if you do have collateral damage, you will defeat your purpose. You’ll turn more people against you.”

HAGEL TELLS NEXT PRESIDENT TO ‘LISTEN’: Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has some advice for the next president: “Listen.”

The advice from President Obama’s third Defense secretary came as he and three other former Pentagon chiefs spoke on a panel Monday evening and were asked for recommendations to give the next president on the U.S.-China relationship.

Some of the other respondents’ advice extended beyond China. Hagel’s answer was short.

“One word? Listen,” he said.

When asked after the panel whether he felt the administration had not listened to military officers enough, Hagel replied, “I think the comment I made here, I’ll let that stand.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

— Senate heads toward fight over refugee ‘pause’

— McConnell: Senate will take up North Korea sanctions bill

— Ex-Obama envoy skeptical of Syrian peace plan

— Carson hired ex-Benghazi Committee investigator

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