Iran Confronts US Navy In Gulf

(Reuters/CNN) 10 minutes ago – Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats provoked three U.S. navy ships Saturday in Straits of Hormuz: CNN

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route off the Iranian coast, over the weekend, CNN reported on Monday.

Citing unidentified U.S. officials, CNN said the Iranian vessels came within 200 yards (meters) of the U.S. ships in the strait on Saturday.

A radio transmission from one of the Iranian ships said, “I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes,” CNN reported, citing a U.S. official.

Strait of Hormuz - shipping lanes (Univ. of Texas)

After the threatening radio communication, U.S. sailors manned their ships’ guns and were very close to opening fire, it said.

Update [2008-1-7 07:55 AM PST]: Pentagon says ships harassed by Iran

US President George W. Bush will not win any support for military action against Iran when he visits four Gulf Arab allies later this month, political analysts in the region say. While Gulf states are concerned about Iran’s nuclear programme, they would be even more fearful of a US-Iranian conflict.

“It might not spell the end of Iran as a military power, but merely spark Iranian reactions against Gulf states which are more than these countries can take,” Kuwait’s Ayed al-Manna said.

Although Washington rode roughshod over the Gulf states’ opposition to its 2003 invasion of Iraq, they can be expected to urge Bush “not to escalate militarily with Iran because of the consequences that military action would have in the region” and to pursue a peaceful settlement instead, said Emirati analyst Mohammed al-Roken.

Bush will visit Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as part of a week-long Middle East trip starting in Israel on January 9.  

The Pentagon, which has in the past tried to place its naval operations above US laws, has suffered a court reversal that is bound to have repercussions well beyond the California coast and impact the US Navy’s global operations.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has imposed rigid limits on the navy’s use of mid-frequency sonar off the coast of southern California. The sonar is suspected of causing disruption to whale and dolphin navigation systems.

The ruling, in response to a case brought by environmentalists, bans sonar within 12 nautical miles of the California coast, increases the navy’s “shut down” zone for sonar use near marine mammals, and mandates the navy monitor for marine mammals one hour prior to sonar exercises as well as during them.

The court’s finding, with “near certainty” that US naval sonic “mitigation schemes” are “grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure”, has direct bearing on the navy’s operations in the Persian Gulf, which include active sonar training “under actual conditions”.

The navy’s surface ships and submarines stationed in the Persian Gulf use sonar to detect Iran’s Russian-made diesel submarines. And given the mass stranding of several species of whales following US naval exercises in, among other places, the Bahamas, the Canary Islands, Hawaii, North Carolina, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, and the US Virgin Islands, these operations could be called challenged.