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Posted
By Adam Robertson
January 10, 2008
A
naval confrontation between the U.S.
and Iran in the Gulf’s strategic
waters provided a golden opportunity
for Washington to step up rhetoric
against the Islamic Republic and rally
support for a military strike against
what Bush calls the Iranian nuclear
"threat."
"This was a serious incident,"
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman
said Monday. "We haven't had an event
of this serious a nature anytime
recently."
According to Mr Whitman, three U.S.
Navy ships – a destroyer, a frigate,
and a cruiser – were on what appeared
to be a routine patrol in the Strait
of Hormuz when five small boats
"assessed to be Iranian" approached
them early Sunday morning local time.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon released
grainy footage, purportedly showing
the small boats, which U.S. officials
said were probably affiliated with
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, speeding
near the American warships.
The four-minute video, which
supposedly condenses what U.S.
officials have described as a
20-minute stand-off, is said to be
shot from the bridge of the USS Hopper
in the Strait of Hormuz, a
strategically critical waterway
through which as much as 40 percent of
the world's oil exports are shipped.
In the U.S. recording, a Navy
crewman can be heard over the radio
warning the approaching vessels.
“Request you establish communications,
identify yourself and state your
intentions, over," he says, referring
to "five unidentified small surface"
boats.
The U.S. then issues a final
warning that if the boats do not
change course immediately they will be
"subject to defensive measures".
According to the CNN, an
individual on one of the Iranian ships
radioed “I am coming at you; you will
explode".
Pentagon officials said the
American warships began evasive
maneuvers and were prepared "to take
appropriate action" on the five boats
before they turned away.
As expected, President Bush seized
the weekend incident to renew his
verbal assault on Iran.
"I am there to reassure and to look
people in the eye and say, I believe
Iran is a threat; we have a strategy
to deal with it; and we want to work
with you," Bush told the Arabic
television station Al-Arabiya.
"I believe we can solve this
diplomatically.. On the other hand ...
all options must be on the table in
order to make sure diplomacy is
effective."
On the other hand, the Iranian
government said that the U.S. navy
fabricated the video. "The footage
released by the U.S. Navy are file
pictures and the audio has been
fabricated," Iranian state-run TV
quoted a Revolutionary Guards source
as saying.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Gholam
Ali Haddad Adel dismissed the whole
incident as part of the U.S.
"psychological and propaganda
campaign” against Tehran.
"We have always shown that we
believe in peace and avoiding tension,
and we presume that the U.S. media
propaganda is part of its
psychological and propaganda campaign,
which it is continuously conducting
against Iran," Adel told Tehran
Times on Tuesday.
"If one side should charge others
of meddling in this region, that side
would be Iran, because, unlike the
Americans, who came from thousands of
kilometers away and stationed their
navy ships in the Gulf, we are a
natural neighbor of this waterway," he
added.
Whether fabricated or not, the
incident is expected to heighten
tensions between the U.S. and Iran. It
also raises speculations that Bush’s
visit to the Middle East, which began
Wednesday, is aimed at shoring up U.S.
allies in the face of Tehran.
According to AFP, U.S.
ally Kuwait expressed anxiety about
Bush's stated aim of building on the
momentum of the Annapolis peace
conference. "Kuwaitis are worried that
Bush's visit could be to apply
pressure on Kuwait and the region to
win their support for a military
strike against Iran," health ministry
employee Sami al-Mani said.
Meanwhile, analysts say the naval
stand-off drew worldwide attention
because it took place in the most
strategically important waterway in
the world.
Washington and its allies have long
been concerned that Iran could block
the Strait of Hormuz, crippling U.S.
oil shipments out of the Gulf,
according to Anthony Cordesman, a
security expert at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
"While the threat from Iran's
conventional military may be real, the
more dangerous threat is that of
extremist groups' asymmetric attacks
on oil facilities," he wrote in a 2006
report. "There is no attack-proof
security system. It may take only one
asymmetric or conventional attack on
... tankers in the Strait of Hormuz to
throw the market into a spiral."
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