Iran Daily Opinion Service 26 April
Shanbeh 7 Ordibehesht 1387 شنبه 07 ارديبهشت 1387
Gulf of Tonkin Act II
The US Navy is back again releasing sketchy details of another incident between US and suspected Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. This time, a cargo ship under private contract opened fire with small arms in the general direction of one or more motor boats which approached the ship. The details are maddenly thin:
A civilian ship contracted by the U.S. military fired warning shots at two small boats that approached it in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy said Friday, the latest in a string of similar incidents to trigger concern in Washington…
The Navy said it does not know whether the two boats that approached the Western Venture cargo ship on Thursday were from Iran. Iranian officials have denied their vessels were involved.
Last month, a U.S. Navy-contracted ship fired warning shots at approaching motor boats in the Suez Canal, accidentally killing an Egyptian citizen.
The Western Venture was headed north in international waters in the central Gulf when it was approached by two small boats of unknown origin, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain.
“Following proper procedures, Western Venture issued standard queries to the small boats via bridge-to-bridge radio but received no response,” said Robertson. “Western Venture then activated a flare but again did not receive a response.”
The boats continued toward the ship, and the ship’s security team fired warning shots with .50-caliber machine guns and M-16s into the water in front of the small vessels, causing them to leave the area, said Robertson.
A unit that identified itself as an Iranian coast guard vessel radioed the Western Venture a short time after the incident to determine its identity, said Robertson. “It is not clear if this was one of the small boats or a separate boat,” she said. The Western Venture is owned by U.S.-based Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc. and was carrying military cargo to Kuwait when the incident occurred, said Robertson.
This incident should recall one at the begining of the year where the Navy released a video purporting to show Iranian motor boats making high speed runs at a Navy convoy while broadcasting in the clear in plain Engliesh, “In five minutes you will explode.” It turned out that the threat was a ham radio prankster.
As with the January incident, Iran is denying any threat or challenge.
The IRGC Navy is fully prepared to carry out its duty in guarding Iran’s waters in the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman, an IRGC official says. The remarks were made after US officials alleged that a US vessel had opened fire on Iranian patrol boats.
“If UK or US vessels had fired at Iranian boats, based on previous experiences, they would have faced the harshest reaction by Iranian forces,” a senior IRGC (Islamic Revolution Guards Corps) official told Press TV Friday. An IRGC official had earlier rejected the reports that an American ship had opened fire on Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf.
There has been no confrontation between Iranian boats and US military vessels in the Persian Gulf, he told Press TV.
This will take some time to settle out, but one of these days, it might become real, and we’ll have ourselves a shoot’n war.
Chairman of US Joint Chief Sends New Warning
Admiral Fallon, who was notoriously booted upstairs to the Joint Chiefs and out of CENTCOM (now Gen Patraeus) took out after Iran:
The nation’s top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.
“It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.
Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. “I have no expectations that we’re going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future,” he said.
Mullen’s statements and others by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently signal a new rhetorical onslaught by the Bush administration against Iran, amid what officials say is increased Iranian provision of weapons, training and financing to Iraqi groups that are attacking and killing Americans.
Message to all: Admiral Mullen is no peacenik. If the circumstances present themselves, he will follow orders like anyone else.
This years’ hard-to-find “WMD” is hard evidence of Iranian military fingerprints in Iraq. So far, the evidence has been less than compelling:
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said.
“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way,” Mullen said.
He said recent unrest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a “level of involvement” by Iran that had not been understood by the U.S. military previously. “It became very, very visible in ways that we hadn’t seen before,” he said.
But while Mullen and Gates have recently stated that Tehran must know of Iranian actions in Iraq, which they say are led by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Mullen said he has “no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved in this.”
That’s a problem, all right, but it’s likely that something will be bound to turn up - like the planted drugs in Serpico.






