WASHINGTON — Iranian boats harassed and provoked three American Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the vessels, U.S. officials said Monday, calling it the most serious such incident in years.Gee, we've been mooning Iran for effing MONTHS and this is all we get? Dick is going to be very displeased....U.S. forces were taking steps toward firing on the Iranians to defend themselves, said the U.S. naval commander in the region. But the boats _ believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy _ turned and moved away, officials said.
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An Iranian Revolutionary Guard official also described the incident as nothing unusual.
"No unusual confrontation has taken place between the Guard's patrol vessels and U.S. ships," state-run television quoted the official as saying. The official was speaking on customary condition of anonymity. The Guard official said the Guard's vessels were conducting normal patrols in the Strait of Hormuz when they saw three U.S. ships enter the waters of the region.
"The Guard's navy vessels, as usual, asked the ships to identify themselves and they did so and continued their path," the TV quoted the official as saying.
Whitman said the U.S. vessels were in international waters, making a normal transit into the Gulf. He said the Iranian boats were operating at "distances and speeds that showed reckless and dangerous intent _ reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent."
Historical tensions between the two nations have increased in recent years over Washington's charge that Tehran has been developing nuclear weapons and supplying and training Iraqi insurgents using roadside bombs _ the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.
At about this time last year, Bush announced he was sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region in a show of force against Iran. The U.S. Navy quietly scaled back to one carrier group several months later. But while the two were there, they staged two major exercises off Iran's coast.
Update 1/9: Bryan of Why Now? has a very good description of what may have happened with the ships: Bump and Run.
Update: The New York Times reports about the odd audio made of the Iranian threat.. with no ambient noises from the ships:
Update 1/10: Um... never mind. heh...The episode was initially described Monday by American officials who said it took place Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz.
They said five armed Iranian speedboats approached three United States Navy warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as a radio threat was issued that the American ships would be blown up. No shots were fired. The video runs slightly more than four minutes and, Pentagon officials said, was shot from the bridge of the guided-missile destroyer Hopper.
The audio includes a heavily accented voice warning in English that the Navy warships would explode. However, the recording carries no ambient noise — the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind — that would be expected if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small boats that sped around the three-ship American convoy.
Pentagon officials said they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from shore, or from another ship nearby, although it might have come from one of the five fast boats with a high-quality radio system.
Update 1/11: Ah, of course. It may have been the mysterious voice of the Filipino Monkey. Now all things become clear. We were about to start WWIII because of a prankster....
Update 1/12: Sailor of SteveAudio has the list of facts and fictions. We could have been hijacked into another insane war over NOTHING. We can't get these bozos out of office soon enough.
