The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet has released a statement saying it cannot say with any certainty that threats to blow up its vessels actually came from Iranian Navy speedboats in Sunday’s Straits of Hormuz incident.*
The revelation tacitly supports the Iranian version of events, in that it was a normal challenge by Iranian naval officials for the American vessels to identify themselves, and at no time was there any serious danger of an escalation or any hostile action.
According to the commander of the Iranian naval forces, the patrol boats were on a regular patrol when they challenged the three American vessels to identify themselves and declare any helicopter activity in the area.
The U.S. quickly released a video showing Iranian speedboats in close proximity to the warships, with audio that the Iranians claimed was fake.
On Thursday the Iranian Navy released its own footage, taken on board one of the speedboats, showing a radio operator making clear requests in English for identification and activity reports. One of the American vessels can be heard to reply; “This is coalition warship 73, I am operating in international waters.”
Shortly after the challenge and the response, the Iranian speedboats left the area.
The incident came as President George W. Bush began his first ever visit to Israel, where he frequently cited the Hormuz incident as further evidence of Iran’s belligerence.
The latest U.S. Navy report, however, appears to suggest quite the opposite, and undermines current efforts by Bush to isolate Iran and build an anti-Tehran alliance among its Arab neighbours.
*During the recent presidential debate the only candidate to acknowledge the Navy’s doubts over the source of the incident was Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), who struck a much more cautious tone: The Navy commander of the fifth fleet was on ABC and announced that, “you know, that voice might not have come from those vessels.” Ignoring these concerns, former governor Mitt Romney threw an insult at Paul, saying, “I think Congressman Paul should not be reading so many of Ahmadinejad’s press releases.”
Considering that Paul was merely noting the Navy’s own doubts about the incident, Romney’s barb is foolish. In fact, the Washington Post reports this morning that “the Pentagon said it does not dispute anything” in an Iranian video that “offers no indication of the tensions that supposedly sparked the encounter.” As the New York Times puts it:
“Naval and Pentagon officials have said that the video and audio were recorded separately, then combined. On Wednesday, Pentagon officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially, said they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.
“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.”