Iran Seeks Confrontation in Gulf By Kenneth R. Timmerman

The near-miss confrontation between Iranian speedboats and a U.S. naval convoy in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday was a clear provocation by Iran, aimed at testing the reaction time of U.S. Navy commanders and the political will of the United States, sources within the Iranian military tell Newsmax.

As a result, the U.S. Navy can expect similar provocations in the future, as Iran seeks to determine what red lines the U.S. Navy is willing to draw in the narrow sea lanes.

“If the U.S. Navy had shown strength and directly opened fire, the Revolutionary Guards high command would understand that they can gain nothing in military hostilities with the United States,” Newsmax sources within the Iranian military said.

Instead, this latest incident has only fueled the aggressiveness of Iran’s leaders, who see that the United States has now followed Britain, which backed down after a group of British Marines was taken hostage in international waters by Revolutionary Guards patrol boats last spring.

Dramatic video footage released yesterday by the U.S. Navy showed five Iranian speedboats racing across the wake of a U.S. Navy convoy in the narrow international shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf on Sunday. [Edtor's Note: To view the Pentagon video, go here now.]

After a series of bull horn blasts and repeated warnings from the radio operator on the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, the sky-blue Iranian boats broke off — just seconds before U.S. commanders gave the order to open fire on them.

The entire incident lasted nearly 20 minutes, with the Iranians taunting the Americans in the final moments. “I am coming to you . . . You will explode in few minutes,” an Iranian radioed the Americans from his speedboat.

The other two boats in the U.S. convoy were the guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal, and the guided missile frigate USS Ingraham.

By way of example, the USS Port Royal, the last of the Ticonderoga class cruisers, cost $1 billion and carries a crew of 33 officers, 27 chief petty officers, and 340 enlisted men.

“The incident on January 6 was unusual in that it involved the taunting of U.S. Navy warships engaged in free passage through the Strait of Hormuz,” said retired Navy Cmdr. Joseph Tenaglia, a maritime security specialist who was deployed in the region on active duty during the tanker war in the 1980s and has been studying the region for 26 years.

“I think this is a game of chicken. You have some young hothead radicals with a speedboat and some weapons who are told go out and bother the Americans, but don't get too close or they may shoot. After all it's called the Persian Gulf not the American Gulf.”

But Iranian sources say that the provocation was part of a strategic plan, which Newsmax first revealed last spring, to test U.S. reactions in preparation of a full-scale confrontation with the United States that would involve naval and missile forces in the Persian, and terrorist surrogates around the world.

Last year, the Iranians flew drones close to U.S. aircraft carriers patrolling in the Persian Gulf and showed the footage on state-owned television. “This was their way of saying, ‘look how close we can get to you,’ said Sardar Haddad, an Iranian activist with close ties to Iranian intelligence and military circles.

“The have plenty of individuals who are willing to blow themselves up. If the U.S. Navy doesn’t take this seriously, they could face something worse than what happened to the USS Cole,” he added.

The Iranian provocation occurred on the eve of President Bush’s eight-day visit to the Middle East, where he plans to discuss the threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons program with Israel and other U.S. allies in the region.

President Bush responded categorically to the Iranian thrust just before setting out for his Middle East tour.

“They should not have done it, pure and simple,” Bush told reporters. “I don’t know what their thinking was, but I’m telling you what I think it was — I think it was a provocative act.”

The timing of the Iranian probe clearly was aimed at sending a signal to the United States and to America’s friends on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, who closely monitor traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Arab gulf states have bad memories of Iranian actions during the final years of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, when Iranian Revolutionary Guards vessels seeded the narrow international shipping channels with naval mines that crippled oil tankers and ultimately provoked a U.S. military response.

They are also seriously worried by Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and its ability to conduct subversive actions against their regimes through local Muslim groups.

Iran is seeking to deter them from a closer alliance with the United States, and specifically, from allowing their territory to be used to launch strategic strikes against Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.

Peter Brookes, a former U.S. Navy officer and strategic analyst for the Heritage Foundation, believes that Israel is nearing a decision to unilaterally bomb Iran.

Simple, Brookes believes. Because Russia has finally set a date — sometime this spring — for delivering the first load of nuclear fuel to Iran’s nuclear reactor at Busheir, along the Persian Gulf coast.

Israel has twice launched airstrikes to cripple the nuclear programs of its declared enemies.

In June 1981, it struck the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq. Last September, it struck a site in Syria which Brookes and other analysts believe was intended to house a nuclear weapons development program.

In both cases, Israel struck before any nuclear material was present, “to prevent radiation from the reactor being spewed into the atmosphere after a strike,” Brookes said last week.

A similar motive could now prompt Israel to strike Iran in the coming weeks or months, before the Russian nuclear material is delivered to Busheir, Brookes believes.

Another good article at Human Events.con. [http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24357] I especially liked “Should this continue, they may soon learn even a well-trained and well-disciplined Navy has its limits.”

Close Enough to Shoot
by James Zumwalt

Many years ago a fascinating television drama was aired depicting human psychology in the face of terror and intimidation. Two cars were driving at night on a lonely stretch of a two-lane highway. A family on vacation in the first car was soon approached from behind by a fast-moving second car, driven by two young teenage hooligans, determined to cause trouble. Occupants in the second car immediately began harassing those in the first for no reason — tailgating the car, overtaking it suddenly and then cutting it off after pulling ahead.
Wanting more excitement, the hooligans decided to play “chicken” — i.e., turning their car around and heading straight back at the first car in the same lane to see who would turn away first. They did this many times, forcing the first car to swerve to avoid a collision. Playing the game a final time, these young hooligan terrorists revved their engine, locked on the first car’s headlights and headed straight for them. They fully expected the first car to chicken out. Yet, as the distance closed, the first car remained steady in its own lane, refusing to yield to the second car racing towards it. Recognizing, at the last moment, the first car would not swerve, the second car did to avoid a collision, crashing as it did so. As the two hooligans took their last breath, disconcerted by the first car’s failure to swerve, they realized they had been fooled. The family had simply abandoned their car, leaving it parked on the roadway with headlights on as they all stood well out of the way, leaving the terrorist hooligans to determine their own fate to live or to die.

A similar incident of international proportion occurred on January 6 involving three US Navy ships and Iranian “hoodlums” aboard five fast inshore attack craft belonging to the Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC). Fortunately for the Iranians, there were no fatalities, but their aggressive and confrontational conduct could well have triggered a swift and devastating attack by the US ships making a split-second decision whether a perceived imminent threat exists to their safety. In the apex of the Strait of Hormuz, in international waters, at 8:00 am that day, with clear visibility, the US ships sailed in a staggered column as a formation of five fast inshore attack boats sped towards them. Only one of the five flew an Iranian flag. Approaching the Americans, the Iranians broke into two groups — one sped down the right side of the US Navy formation while the other group sped down the left.

Both groups then maneuvered aggressively towards the ships, closing to less than 500 yards. The Navy ships followed all proper international protocols in an effort to avoid an incident. Bridge-to-bridge communications were used; ten short blasts were sounded as an alarm; signal lights were flashed. No response was received. The boats were moving so fast that at times they became airborne. At one point, a boat came close enough to one ship to force it into making an abrupt turn to starboard. Another boat then maneuvered into position to place itself within the wake of the lead ship, where it proceeded to drop several small white boxes. While their contents were unknown but could well have contained explosives, the floating boxes were cautiously watched, but failed to effect a course change by the Navy formation. Further concerns arose as a heavy accented voice came across the bridge-to-bridge communications system, chiding in English, “I’m coming at you. You will explode in a few moments.” It was at this point the Iranians probably came closest to finding themselves blown out of the water. However, the well-trained and well-disciplined Navy crews continued to hold their fire. That discipline paid off as the Iranian boats immediately broke off contact, returning to Iranian territorial waters.

We can only guess at Iranian intentions, but it is clear they were focused on causing an incident. We can assume authorization for this outrageous conduct came from one of two sources. A former IRGC commander who has greatly empowered the IRGC as an instrument of his domestic and foreign policy, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may simply allow IRGC commanders to undertake such conduct on their own initiative; or, alternatively, Ahmadinejad authorized it directly. In either case, it demonstrates a senseless disregard for international custom and tradition at sea — a practice at which the Iranians are becoming more and more adept. Not only is this evidenced by its aggressive acts in seizing several British sailors last year in international waters but it is evidenced too by earlier acts against US ships exercising rights of passage. One incident last September involved two US warships firing warning shots across the bow of harassing IRGC boats — a difficult thing to do without hitting a target so small and moving so fast. But, again, it was Navy training and discipline that demonstrated to these hoodlums they were getting too
close. The aggressive conduct of the IRGC boats stopped immediately after the warning shots were fired.

One possible motivation for this most recent incident might be the recent trip by Ahmadinejad to a number of leading Arab states — the same states soon to be visited by President Bush. Perhaps it is an effort to intimidate these Arab leaders by Ahmadinejad demonstrating his defiance against the Americans.

Just like the fictionalized story of the family confronting young hooligans foregoing acceptable conduct in favor of aggression seeking to intimidate others, the IRGC navy acts similarly against coalition forces. They may believe each time they undertake such conduct, they can crank up the level of intimidation without cost. Should this continue, they may soon learn even a well-trained and well-disciplined Navy has its limits. A split-second decision to act in self-defense in the future may well extract the ultimate price from Iranians who have crossed too far over the line in their efforts to intimidate. They too will determine their own fate to live or to die.

James Zumwalt is a retired Marine who served in the Vietnam and Gulf wars. He has written opinion pieces on foreign policy, defense and security issues for dozens of newspapers. He is president of his own security consulting company.

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