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Update below
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Sure looks like it and even CNN is forced to question what they were thinking.
Five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats “harassed and provoked” three U.S. Navy ships early Sunday in international waters, the U.S. military said Monday, calling the encounter a “significant” confrontation. …
U.S. military officials said the incident occurred early Sunday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf.
They said that as the guided missile destroyer USS Hopper, the guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal and the guided-missile frigate USS Ingraham were entering the Persian Gulf, five Iranian boats approached them at high speed and swarmed them.
The Iranian boats made “threatening” moves toward the U.S. ships and in one case came within 200 yards of one of them, the U.S. officials said.
The U.S. Navy also received a radio transmission that officials believe came from the Iranian boats. The transmission said, “I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes,” the U.S. military officials told CNN.
When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were “in the process” of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said.
After the radio transmission, one of the Iranian boats dropped white boxes into the water in front of the U.S. ships, the officials said. It was not clear what was in the boxes, the officials said.
Interesting that the Iranians claim they just didn’t know where the boats were from and they stopped as soon as they recognized they were American boats. How exactly did these Iranian Revolutionary Guards know to threaten them in English if they didn’t know they were American (or Canadian or British)? How much closer (than 200 yards) would they need to have come before they could figure out their intended targets were American?
They were clearly trying to push the limits of the American rules of engagement to see just how far they could go. But they knew that if the U.S. had fired on them, they would have been able to scream about the “Great Satan” attacking the vessels of a “peaceful nation” in international waters. Then would have been able to try and use the incident to drum up international “outrage” against the U.S.
Via Jihad Watch
Update: Newsmax has video of the event here. It simply reconfirms that there is no way the Iranians could have not known they were dealing with American ships, the American sailors repeatedly identify themselves and request that the Iranians do the same and that they stay away. After buzzing around the American ships for about two minutes and hearing the American attempts to contact them, the Iranians reply — on the same radio channel and in English — with the “you will explode” threat.
This is an increasingly clear case of the Iranians purposefully attempting to provoke an American attack.
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Update: This raw story article claims that the radio contact could have been the work of the “Filipino Monkey” — apparently a well known radio prankster who trolls radio waves waiting for an opportunity to jump into the midst of radio transmissions with obscene language and threats.
The article only refers to the radio transmissions and does not question the identity of the Iranian boats involved in pestering the US warships.
