[DEBATE] : Iranian Boats May Not Have Made Radio Threat, Pentagon Says

[MFleshman at aol.com]

Gulf of Tonkin II
 
Iranian Boats May Not Have Made Radio Threat, Pentagon Says

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2008; A13
The Pentagon said yesterday that the apparent radio threat to bomb U.S. 
warships in the Persian Gulf last weekend may not have come from the five Iranian 
Revolutionary Guard speedboats that approached them -- and may not even have 
been intended against U.S. targets. 
The communication Sunday was made on radio channel 16, a common marine 
frequency used by ships and others in the region. "It could have been a threat aimed 
at some other nation or a myriad of other things," said Rear Adm. Frank Thorp 
IV, a spokesman for the Navy. 
In the radio message recorded by the Navy, a heavily accented voice said: "I 
am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes." But Farsi speakers 
and Iranians told _The Washington Post_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Washington+Post+Company?tid=informline)  that the accent did not 
sound Iranian. 
In part because of the threatening language, the United States has elevated 
the encounter into an international incident. Twice this week, _President Bush_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/George+W.+Bush?tid=informline
)  criticized _Iran's_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iran.html?nav=el)  behavior as provocative and warned of "serious 
consequences" if it happens again. He is due to head today to the Gulf area, where 
containing Iran is expected to be a major theme of his talks in five oil-rich 
sheikdoms. 
Pentagon officials insist that they never claimed Iran made the threat. "No 
one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats. 
But when they hear it simultaneously to the behavior of those boats, it only 
adds to the tension," said Pentagon spokesman _Geoff Morrell_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Geoff+Morrell?tid=informline) . "If this verbal 
threat emanated from something or someone unrelated to the five boats, it 
would not lessen the threat from those boats." 
The warning was picked up on a bridge-to-bridge communication received by 
many ships in the region about seven minutes after the five Iranian patrol boats 
first appeared on the horizon, Thorp said. The main threat, Pentagon officials 
said, was the way the five boats swarmed erratically around the USS Port 
Royal, an Aegis cruiser, and its accompanying frigate and destroyer, and then 
dropped small, white, box-like items in the water. 
"When you get a bridge-to-bridge call, you have no way of knowing where it 
came from," Thorp said. "Nobody ever, with any certainty, knew it was from them. 
But it did escalate it up a notch as it was happening at the same time" that 
the patrol boats, manned by _Revolutionary Guards_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Iranian+Revolutionary+Guard+Corps?tid=informline) , 
engaged in menacing behavior, Thorp said. 
Yet _the Pentagon_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Pentagon?tid=informline)  had consistently given the impression that the threat was 
linked to the Iranian boats. 
"This is more serious because of the aggregate of the actions, the 
coordinated movement of the ships, the boats, the aggressive maneuvering, the more or 
less simultaneous radio communication, the dropping of objects. . . . So, yes, 
it's more serious than we have seen," Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, head of U.S. 
Naval Forces Central Command, said at a briefing on Monday. 
The Pentagon's audiotape of the warning was released Tuesday, with the 
videotape, in an abridged four-minute package of the incident, which U.S. officials 
said lasted between 20 and 30 minutes. The U.S. ships were within seconds of 
opening fire on the Iranian speedboats when the boats turned and headed toward 
Iran, Pentagon officials said. 
The radio threat was merely a "sideshow" to the physical threat, a senior 
U.S. official familiar with the incident said. "What was the command-and-control 
mechanism here? Was _Tehran_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Tehran?tid=informline)  aware of what they were doing? They made these 
provocative moves. The radio was a sideshow to the event," he said. 
To further challenge the U.S. version, Iran yesterday released what it 
asserted was an abridged video of the same incident, which shows a calm exchange. 
"Slowly get a little closer . . . can't make out the ship number," says a 
Revolutionary Guardsman on a small patrol boat, speaking in Farsi. "I hear something 
being announced from its loudspeakers; what is it saying? I think they're 
talking to us." 
"Which channel?" says a second Iranian. "Coalition warship 73," he says, 
speaking in English through his radio mike. "This Iranian navy patrol boat. 
Request side number . . . operating in the area this time." 
A U.S. ship radios back: "This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and 
clear." 
The five-minute video, released by Iranian television yesterday, offers no 
indication of the tensions that supposedly sparked the encounter between U.S. 
and Iranian vessels in the _Strait of Hormuz_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Strait+of+Hormuz?tid=informline)  -- and no indication of an 
intention to attack. The Pentagon said it does not dispute anything in the 
Iranian video. 
In Tehran, Revolutionary Guards Brig. Gen. Ali Fadavi charged that the United 
States was creating a "media fuss," the Fars News Agency reported. He said 
the Iranian objective was to obtain registration numbers that were unreadable. 
The U.S. presence in the Gulf's international waters is a sensitive issue in 
Iran because the USS Vincennes, another Aegis cruiser, shot down an Iranian 
passenger plane in 1988, killing all 290 people on board. The United States at 
first contended that it was a warplane and then said that it was outside the 
civilian air corridor and did not respond to radio calls. Both were untrue, and 
the radio calls were made on military frequencies to which the airliner did 
not have access. A subsequent investigation showed that the U.S. ship was off 
course. 
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Iranian video does not refute the 
U.S. version. "Simply choosing not to reveal the careless and reckless actions 
in this video does not change the facts from what took place," he said in an 
e-mail. 
The United States yesterday sent an official protest to Tehran through 
_Switzerland_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Switzerland?tid=informline) , while _Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Robert+Gates?tid=informline)  charged that Iran had 
acted aggressively. "What concerned us was, first, the fact that there were five 
of these boats and, second, that they came as close as they did to our ships 
and behaved in a pretty aggressive manner," he said at a news conference. 
Quoting former defense secretary William S. Cohen, Gates said: " 'Are you 
going to believe me or your lying eyes?' I think that aptly characterizes and 
appropriately characterizes the Iranian claim." 
Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.



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