Iran Again?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Five Iranian boats made aggressive maneuvers and showed hostile intent against three U.S. Navy ships over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route in the Gulf, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The Pentagon said the incident was serious. It described the Iranian actions as “careless, reckless and potentially hostile” and said Tehran should provide an explanation.
The Canadian Edmonton Sun quoted a Pentagon spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying this is “the most serious provocation of this sort that we’ve seen yet.” Last March, in the Strait, Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailors captured 15 British sailors and held them for nearly two weeks.
President George W. Bush is due to travel to the Middle East this week on a trip he has said is partly aimed at countering Iranian influence.
“We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the three U.S. ships had been in international waters passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday when they were approached by five fast boats, at least some of which were visibly armed. “This is a serious incident,” Whitman said. “This required our vessels to issue warnings and conduct some evasive maneuvering,” Whitman told reporters. “The U.S. Navy vessels were prepared to take appropriate actions… but there was no engagement of the vessels.”
Other Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Iranians made threats by radio and a U.S. captain was in the process of ordering sailors to open fire when the Iranian boats moved away. According to the officials, the radio transmission from one of the Iranian ships said: “I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes.”
The sea channel, the Strait of Hormuz, which shares Iran’s coastline at the entrance to the Gulf is the world’s most important waterway because of the huge volume of oil exported through it daily.
Roughly 40 percent of all globally traded oil with an estimated 13.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude passes through the narrow channel on tankers, plus an additional 2 million barrels per day of oil products, including fuel oil, are exported through the passage daily as well as 31 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year from Qatar.
– Ninety percent of all the oil exported from Gulf producers is carried on oil tankers through the Strait. The message from Iran is clear that they don’t like Bush coming to the Mid-East and are threatening our oil supply in response. The only things we go to war over, anymore, are oil and direct attacks on us.
Who knows? War with Iran may not be off the table with the Bush administration yet.
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January 8th, 2008 at 8:51 am
It almost came to fisticuffs, they were jest testing.
Rast, you might like to know that five countries have joined the U.N. Security Council as non-permanent members for two-year terms. Among them is Libya, which has also assumed the Security Council’s rotating presidency for the month of January.
Libya moved deeper into the fold of the international community Thursday, taking up the helm of the very same body that had previously sanctioned it as a state-sponsor of terrorism.
Quote:-
“We have four million Muslims in Albania. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims.”
– Col Muammar Gaddafi, interview on Al-Jazeera TV. Qatar, April 10, 2006.
In Jan, 2003, libya held the chair of the UN Human Rights commission.
You couldn’t make this stuff up!
At some point soon, the shiite will have to hit the fan. Somewhere there just must be a line in the sand
January 8th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
THEY WERE COMING AT THE U.S. SHIP AND STILL THE CREW WAS,NT ORDERED TO FIRE??? PATHETIC!!!!!!!!!! THE IRAINIAN SHITBAGS SHOULD BE IN DAVY JONES LOCKER!!!!!!!!!! (BOTTOM OF THE SEA) I CAN,T UNDERSTAND WHY THERE WAS EVEN ANY COMMUNICATION WITH THE IRAINIAN DIRTBAGS. THE ONLY COMMUNICATION SHOULD HAVE BEEN MISSLES AND HOT LEAD FLYING.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Actually the U.S. Navy ships were communicating by radio and semaphore. Whether the Iranians responded or not, I don’t know. Our ships were preparing to fire when the Iranians turned tail, no doubt because they saw that we were about to open fire.