Iranians say USN fabricated the vid. Questions abound re the purpose and effect but vid first, via Beeb:
The US has released grainy footage, apparently showing small boats speeding near the American warships.
In an audio recording, an Iranian radio operator appears to say “I am coming at you; you will explode”.
The Iranian parliamentary speaker has dismissed the affair as being part of a US propaganda campaign against Tehran.
“The footage released by the US Navy are file pictures and the audio has been fabricated,” Iranian state-run TV quoted a Revolutionary Guards source as saying.
The US Pentagon says the American ships were about to open fire when the Iranian boats withdrew.
US President George W Bush described the incident as “provocative”, adding that it was a “dangerous situation” that should not have happened.
I dunno. If I was fabricating provocative Iranian boat vid, I would have tried to do a better job fabricating the part where they throw boxes over the side in front of a US Navy ship. Times of London reports, “One bright-blue Iranian boat, manned by a crew in orange jump suits, can be seen snaking through the wake of the American warships, apparently dropping boxes into the water.” I couldn’t pick it out. USN needs to up the quality of its provocative Iranian boat vid fabrication. With or without boxes, high-speed boats within 200 meters in those waters are a major threat, and the USN’s restraint could have gone badly wrong.
Sunday’s incident didn’t come out of nowhere. These days in Tehran there is real euphoria that Iran is about to turn back the clock to 1763, the year the first British warship passed into the Gulf and established an uninterrupted Western dominance over one of the most strategic bodies of water in the world. Iranian thinking is that the U.S. will get tired of Iraq, leave, and let fall the first domino in a new Persian empire. When Iranian President Ahmadinejad crowed about the National Intelligence Estimate — the one absolving Iran of building a nuclear bomb — being a “declaration of surrender,” he had the Gulf in mind.
Iran isn’t even bothering to hide its imperial grasp. Or that oil is the key to the Gulf’s heart. A contact in a major U.S. oil company told me that Iraq’s Shi’a-led oil ministry has been soliciting the company’s interest in a couple of Iraqi fields. When the company finally took the bait, the Iraqis coyly suggested that the company might want to first pass through Tehran to get an Iranian green light. It was the only way for the U.S. major to secure an Iraqi property. The company of course declined the invitation, but got the not-so-subtle message that Iran is a major player in Iraq.
Well, that didn’t work. Reuters: Oil shrugs off Iran-US bounce, falls below $97.
With Bush headed to the Middle East today to talk peace, Israel wants to talk Iran, says CSM. That’s funny, so does Bush.
Here’s a guy at Asia Times who thinks, a little over-optimistically, that Iran holds the political edge and will soon hold the military edge. Former Indian Foreign Service officer MK Bhadrakumar’s worth a read for the perspective of someone who seems to think Iran is a cool hand that holds all the cards. He’s right in the sense that Iran may only have to bide its time, but George Bush has been grossly underestimated and called a lame duck before. I’d suggest provocations do little to advance Iran’s cause at this point, particularly when the U.S. election has been so quaintly focused on “hope” and “change.”
We’ll end with Stratfor’s Geopolitical Diary, mulling the mystery of it all:
We continue to believe emphatically that the president did not oppose the declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which essentially removed the war option from the table. If he had, he would have maneuvered around it by now. Nevertheless, just before he departed on his trip, the United States announced a naval confrontation with Iranian speedboats, which were initially said to have transmitted a threatening message to the American ship. Given the precedent of the USS Cole, we find it difficult to imagine that an American warship being pursued aggressively by Iranian speedboats radioing threats would not open fire immediately, blowing the boats out of the water. Indeed, the Iranian government claimed that the boats meant no threat and that these encounters are routine. Whatever happened out there, it gave Bush a platform from which to increase the tension between the United States and Iran, the first such uptick since the NIE was issued and, of course, coming on the eve of his trip.
It has been said that Bush is in the region to build a coalition against Iran. Obviously, there already is a coalition against Iran. Most of the regimes in the Arabian Peninsula are more worried about Iran than are the Americans. The Syrians are playing their own arcane games and the Turks are not going to be pushed into an anti-Iranian coalition at this point. Coalition-building against Iran is either unnecessary or futile, depending on who you are talking about.
So there is a mystery here. Bush is taking a long trip. It starts with a modest increase in U.S.-Iranian tension. He is not going to do much more than make incremental improvements in Israeli-Palestinian relations, if that. He will stay out of local Iraqi politics. And he doesn’t need to build an anti-Iranian relationship. Obviously, he wants to build his legacy, but his legacy rests on whether the situation in Iraq continues to improve. There isn’t much else to the Bush legacy at this point. Therefore, if we accept that he is concerned about his legacy and this trip is tied to it, there is then a mystery. The key to long-term Iraqi stability continues to rest in Iran. How that ties into this trip is what we need to watch unfold, if it does.
Stratfor has been of the opinion that we need to negotiate seriously with Iran, which I’ve never quite gotten as Iran is a terrorism-supporting thugocracy that is utterly untrustworthy, eager to see us brought down, and determined to dominate the world’s richest oil-producing region. What is not a mystery here is that Iran’s aquatic intention is to remind Bush and the world as he ventures to the Mideast, that Iran can make things difficult in the Straits of Hormuz. Which is a singularly bad idea, and suggests Iran must be somewhat desperate and feeling vulnerable to be doing this when all the mullahs have to do is quietly let America to forget about them.
Obviously the Iranians were hoping the USN would fire the first shot. Then they could say that the US is the aggressor in a war against innocent Iran. It would be a very stupid move for the Iranians to actually attack a US Navy vessel.
USN needs to up the quality of its provocative Iranian boat vid fabrication.
For sure :-)
“The footage released by the US Navy are file pictures and the audio has been fabricated,” Iranian state-run TV quoted a Revolutionary Guards source as saying.
[...] 2008 The New 1964? A few days ago, some Iranians in speed boats harassed and threatened US warships in the Straits of Hormuz. A major incident was averted by the cool heads of our sailors. They did get video of the Iranian [...]
is a Boston Herald editor who has reported on politics, crime, science, maritime matters, foreign affairs and conflict in the United States, Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East.
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January 9th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Iran: U.S. Navy Video and Audio a Fake
For sheer comic relief alone, the Iranian news outlet Press TV is a hoot. It comes off as a version of The Onion for mad mullahs.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Obviously the Iranians were hoping the USN would fire the first shot. Then they could say that the US is the aggressor in a war against innocent Iran. It would be a very stupid move for the Iranians to actually attack a US Navy vessel.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
USN needs to up the quality of its provocative Iranian boat vid fabrication.
For sure :-)
“The footage released by the US Navy are file pictures and the audio has been fabricated,” Iranian state-run TV quoted a Revolutionary Guards source as saying.
What doofuses these people are. (doofi ?)
January 9th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Why is the trip happening? Weak horse vs the strong horse?
Hello, Iran?
Weak horses do the bluster thing. It’s all they have.
BTW, impeach Undersecretary of Defense England! The jihadi’s main man at the Pentagon. ;)
January 9th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
[...] 2008 The New 1964? A few days ago, some Iranians in speed boats harassed and threatened US warships in the Straits of Hormuz. A major incident was averted by the cool heads of our sailors. They did get video of the Iranian [...]