Posted on 01/07/2008 6:42:06 PM PST by blam
US tells Iran to back down after Gulf skirmish
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 08/01/2008
The White House has told Iran that it risked provoking "a dangerous incident" after a weekend skirmish brought the two nations to the brink of conflict.
US naval commanders were about to fire on a group of Iranian attack boats after being challenged at the mouth of the Gulf on Sunday, the Pentagon has disclosed.
The Persian Gulf is the scene of tensions between Iran and the US
Three US navy ships were targeted by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy as they entered the strait just after dawn.
Five Iranian patrol boats came within 200 yards of the US vessels, issued threats over the radio and dropped mysterious objects into the water.
A transcript of the radio traffic revealed that the Iranians had warned the US commanders that an attack was underway: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes."
A "swarm" attack by small Iranian boats in the busy shipping lane is one of the prime security threats to the US navy presence.
Its commanders were handing down an order to open fire when Iran navy patrol boats pulled back from international waters.
A Pentagon spokesman said the Iranians were "moments" away from coming under fire.
A statement issued by the US Navy Fifth Fleet said that the incident occurred at about 8am local time as the cruiser Port Royal, the destroyer Hopper and the frigate Ingraham were on their way into the Gulf and passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Tensions in the Strait, a narrow waterway responsible for 40 per cent of the global trade in oil shipments, have escalated as Washington and Teheran swap accusations over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The White House demanded that Iran refrain from further provocation but Teheran played down the incident as an "ordinary occurrence".
The Pentagon said the skirmishes constituted a "significant" act of aggression at the chokepoint of global oil supplies.
An official said: "Five small boats were acting in a very aggressive way, charging the ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and causing our ships to take evasive manoeuvres. There were no injuries but there very well could have been."
Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons has seen the US-led naval coalition, based at the home of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, dramatically increase its presence in the Gulf.
The Iranian response has been a series of dangerous exercises that have forced the coalition on to high alert.
Operating procedures were overhauled last year after the Iranian navy seized 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines, who were protecting Iraqi oil facilities at the head in the Gulf.
The British patrol was accused of trespassing in Iranian territory and surrendered without a shot, in part because air cover was withdrawn before the Iranians pounced.
The 15 crew of the frigate Cornwall were taken to Teheran where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presided over a humiliating ceremony announcing their release as an Easter "gift" to the British people.
Steps taken to ensure the superiority of allied naval firepower along the international boundaries of the congested shipping lanes include deployment of modern attack helicopters plus rapid reaction US coastguard boats and additional marine guards.
Task Force 152, the US-led naval coalition, officially acts in support of the oil-rich but militarily-weak states. With President George W Bush due to visit the region this week, Iran's threat to world oil supplies will loom large on the agenda.
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Dire Strait
The Strait of Hormuz is 34 miles across at its narrowest, but its navigable channel is just two miles wide, augmented by a two-mile buffer zone.
Analysts say current traffic carries 13.4 million barrels of crude oil per day, down from a peak of 17 million per day last year.
The rate is expected to rise to 34 million barrels a day by 2020.
An Iran-Iraq "Tanker War" in the mid-1980s reduced shipping by a quarter, forcing US intervention.
Click here to see for yourself.
Iran better be ready for the nasty letter in all caps from the State Dept.
Sheesh!!
Ron Paul issued an immediate apology and promised to stay out of international waters once elected president!!!!!!!!
Ping to you, saw your earlier thread, thought you might be interested.
The State Dept. would not use all caps if 1,000 nuclear tipped ICBMs were inbound from Russia and China both.
What does the UN say ??
The UN will just give them some award for once again making the US look like paper tigers.
*********************EXCERPT********************
By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the January 8, 2008 edition
Washington - Five Iranian fast boats confronted a small flotilla of US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf in a "careless, reckless and potentially hostile" incident Sunday, Pentagon officials said.
The incident, which ended after the Iranian boats turned away with no shots fired, occurred as President Bush prepared to visit the Middle East for talks this week. It considerably raises tensions between Iran and the United States.
The US Navy routinely encounters Iranian boats in the region, but the actions of the Iranian Navy on Sunday are "more serious than we've seen," said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the US Fifth Fleet.
"These are unnecessarily provocative [actions] in international waters," Admiral Cosgriff told reporters by videoconference from his headquarters in Bahrain.
Three US Navy ships – the cruiser USS Port Royal, the destroyer USS Hopper, and the frigate USS Ingraham – were on patrol about 12 miles from Iranian territory in the Strait of Hormuz early Sunday when five small boats associated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards approached them, Pentagon officials said. The fast boats, highly maneuverable patrol craft, were "visibly armed," a Pentagon spokesman said, and began aggressive maneuvers against the three American ships, steaming in formation into the Persian Gulf.
The boats got within 200 to 500 yards of the American ships before splitting into two groups. At least one of the fast boats then dropped several white boxes in the water in the pathway of the Ingraham, which successfully dodged them, considering them potential floating mines. Commanders of the US ships also received radio communications thought to be from one of the Iranian boats in which they heard an individual say in English, "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes."
A Navy official said it was impossible to determine if the radio transmission actually came from one of the five boats.
Taken together, however, the American ships began to employ other evasive maneuvers and were prepared to "take appropriate action" before the five boats turned away, officials said.
One of the US ships was reported to be on the verge of shooting at one of the Iranian boats but apparently the boats turned away before the commanding officer gave that command, officials said.
Navy officials would not be specific about the kinds of precautions the US ships took, citing the classified nature of the rules of engagement during such incidents.
Cosgriff said it's dangerous for Iranian boats to provoke American ships in such a way because US naval ships are prepared to defend themselves as they ramp up their procedures in response to a threat.
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The US State Department and the National Security Council are demanding an explanation of what they termed was harassment from the Iranian government.
"What we're doing now is reviewing the situation and trying to make a determination to see what level we would lodge some form of formal protest or discussions with the Iranians with this thing," says a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
I think the Iranians realized at the last moment that the US Navy means business and is not to be messed with. I think they got the wrong message from the British incident with the Cornwall and thought it would also apply to the US Navy. They guessed wrong.
Nothing will come out of this from our wonderful State Dept. They will yap about it then release a statement warning Iran if it happens again there will be “consequences” and it will happen again.
U.S. Describes Confrontation With Iranian Boats
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The Pentagon said last year that there were signs that Iran had turned command of its naval missions in the Persian Gulf over to the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ maritime forces, stripping Iran’s regular navy of that responsibility.
Shoot first. Ask questions later.
You are a very deep and strategic thinker. Let’s hope our military leaders are just a bit deeper.
Iranians harassed U.S. ships, Navy confirms
*******************************EXCERPTS**********************
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a November gathering of Basij militia forces with Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran, is regarded in Iran as the highest-ranking cleric in Shiite Islam, but his power is constrained and challenged. (AP)
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Iranian Foreign Ministry and security officials said they could not confirm the incident. Mohammed Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the ministry, and Hamid Reza Haji Babaie, head of parliament's National Security Committee, said today that they had not yet been able to get information about any such confrontation, which reportedly involved the navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a parallel military branch allied with Iranian hard-liners who sometimes have little to do with Iran's official governing bodies.
But the incident has prompted fears that hard-liners within the Iranian establishment are trying to sabotage a reduction in tensions between Washington and Iran. One source close to Iran's hard-line camp said Iranians were justified in warning U.S. or any other forces from straying into their territorial waters.
"Generally speaking, according to the supreme leader's [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's] guidelines, any foreign fleet of vessels or any foreign jet fighter trespassing Iran's water or land borders or air, whether in the Caspian Sea or Persian Gulf or Shatt al Arab, the Revolutionary Guards should react or at least threaten to counterattack," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is general rule, so if U.S. forces trespass, we will respond."
Iran and the U.S. are at odds over Tehran's nuclear program and support for militant groups throughout the Middle East. The incident follows the December release of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that undercut the possibility of war between America and Iran by reporting that Tehran had ceased a clandestine nuclear weapons program in 2003. It also follows an International Atomic Energy Agency report that generally praised Iran's efforts to come clean on its past nuclear activities.
Last week, Khamenei, the country's ultimate military and political authority, spoke in his Friday sermon of the possibility of one day normalizing relations with Washington, though he said now was not the time for a diplomatic breakthrough.
Analysts in the region said the easing of international tensions plays against hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose backers face a stiff challenge from reformist and moderates in upcoming parliamentary elections. One analyst and military expert said the timing of the incident may indicate that some in Iran's political and military establishment don't want an end to the tensions between Iran and the U.S.
"If the news is correct, it means some faction inside the country wants to make the water murky and create tension at the expense of the detente between U.S. and Iran at this juncture," said Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a Tehran political scientist. "The NIE and IAEA reports provided the window for reducing tension. But it seems some factions do not want it, which is very dangerous now. It's playing with fire."
I mean a cannister round full of pork fat exploding in proximity to an Iranian ship would render it inoperable for months while it was cleaned. No Muslim would come aboard her to work. And infidels would have to be hired to scour the ship down , have it repurified by mullahs and re painted. We would be economically benefiting infidels in Iran!
Seriously. Pig grease is a weapon that we should be using in these encounters with a great deal of delight.
There would not be any more probing of US Navy ROE.
“Are we neutered to such an extent that we don’t want to hurt their stupid feeling?”
Yes...
First, why anyone would let armed patrol boats come that close -- there's got to be more to the story. Especially the claim by the New York Times that a M240 machine gun would be trained on a potentially hostile vessel. Did they install these after the USS Cole incident for port usage? In open waters, it just doesn't make sense that these would be manned or considered a defensive weapon. I mean, a 7.62mm round?
And if it was as pictured, with broadcast threats, you'd assume the automatics would be turned on.
Something is just plain strange. They were late transiting the straight due to the absence of one crew member, suspected to have gone overboard a couple days before, but - I don't know how tired you'd have to be to defend a frigate with a small arms machine gun, or let potentially hostile boats that close in.
‘Reckless’ Iranians threaten to blow up American warships in the Gulf
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The radio message received by three American warships as they entered the narrow Strait of Hormuz sent the crews to action stations for an imminent attack.
Five Iranian speedboats had been detected on the radar, approaching fast in the dim light of the early Gulf morning. As they sped towards the group they slipped suspicious boxes into the water.
However, it was the warning transmitted as they closed in that threatened to turn a potentially hostile manoeuvre into a dangerous incident that could have spiralled out of control. “I am coming at you, you will explode in a couple of minutes,” the message said.
***********************snip************************
The confrontation between the five gunboats and the US Navy ships that took place on Sunday was described by the Pentagon as “the most serious provocation of this sort that we’ve seen yet”. The incident, which lasted about 20 minutes, was “careless, reckless and potentially hostile”, Bry-an Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, said. He demanded an explanation from the Iranians.
The Pentagon said that the Iranian boats had turned away “at the very moment that US forces were preparing to open fire in self-defence”.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which took command of Iran’s naval operations in the Gulf last November, has proved on many occasions that it is prepared to be antagonistic towards Western warships in the crowded shipping lane, twice seizing Royal Navy craft and their crews and holding them hostage – in 2004 and again last year. In Sunday’s incident, at about 5am local time, the Iranian speedboats “swarmed” around the US warships and gave every indication of wanting to provoke the Americans into opening fire. The threat to bomb the ships was the first time that the Iranians had used such a ploy to heighten the tension, although Tehran tried to play the whole incident down by saying that it was a routine manoeuvre.
Under US rules of engagement, warships under threat are entitled to open fire in self-defence and to take preemptive action if the evidence points to an imminent attack. Why the US commanders held back after receiving the radio message was not clear. But the gamble paid off. No shots were fired and no one was hurt.
However, Sean McCormack, the US State Department spokesman, said that America would “confront Iranian behaviour where it seeks to do harm either to us or our friends or allies in the region”.
The White House said the harassment of the US ships by Iran was “provocative” and warned Tehran against taking similar action in the future. “We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future,” Gordon Johndroe, the White House spokesman, said.
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