Western media wouldn't lie to us, would it?!?! SAY IT AIN'T SO!
Yes and we can surely trust the Iranian media.
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How do you know the British weren't encroaching the Iranian waters?
Western media wouldn't lie to us, would it?!?! SAY IT AIN'T SO!
In an update to the story, the US is admitting...er...announcing that the message they received may not have come from the Iranian boats.
"The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.
Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else."
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4115702&page=1
Yes, because Iran want nothing but confrontation with the US
Iran releases its video of confrontation at sea
Washington Post
Jan. 10, 2008 01:42 PM
In a challenge to the U.S. version of events, Iran Thursday released a video of the confrontation Sunday between five small Iranian speedboats and three U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.
The five-minute video does not include the confrontation or threatening language described by U.S. officials, who released their own video of the incident Tuesday. Instead, it shows Iranian navy personnel calmly radioing U.S. warships to ask for additional information on ship identification.
It also shows the Iranian patrol boats near but not closing in on the USS Port Royal and two accompanying vessels and captures a radio exchange in English.
“Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat,†an Iranian officer says in English. One of the American warships responds: “This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and clear.â€
The Iranian officer, dressed in a life vest and keffiyeh scarf, then says: “Coalition warship 73, this Iranian navy patrol boat, request side number ... operating in the area (at) this time.â€
Like the four-minute U.S. video released Tuesday, the Iranian video does not capture the entire encounter, which U.S. officials said lasted 20 to 30 minutes, and is therefore difficult to reconcile with the conflicting American version of events. The Iranian video was released by Iran's Press TV satellite station.
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 Pentagon charged that the Iranian vessels threatened to “explode†the U.S. warships and dropped white box-like objects in the water before abruptly turning around and heading north toward Iran.
A U.S. Navy official noted that both versions could reflect the events that transpired.
The State Department said it has sent a formal protest to Iran via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which has handled American interests in Iran since the break in formal relations in 1980. “We have ... prepared and given to the Swiss a diplomatic note formally protesting this incident,†said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
In Tehran, Revolutionary Guards Brig. General Ali Fadavi charged that the United States was creating a “media fuss,†the Fars News Agency reported. He said the Iranian navy's goal was to obtain registration numbers that had been unreadable.
The incident has triggered tough words from the United States. President Bush has twice called the encounter a “provocation†and warned that Iran faced “serious consequences†if it happened again.
Parts of the video record conversations in Persian between Iranians on the patrol boat. They appear to be discussing the clarification requested and a radio frequency change, according to two Persian-speakers contacted by the Washington Post. At one point, the Iranian officer appears to be checking a Global Positioning System device.
“We don't know whether the Iranian version is edited, but from what we see, it appears to be a fairly normal exchange between Iranian naval patrol boats and U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian naval person asks the U.S. to identify itself, which it does,†said Shaul Bakhash, an Iran expert at George Mason University whose wife was detained in Iran for more than eight months last year.
“There is nothing on that tape to indicate a confrontation, the danger of hostilities and certainly no statement by the Iranian side as alleged by the U.S. side that the Iranians were coming at them,†he said.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0110iran-us0110-ON.html
oxymoron wrote:Yes they do, unless the capturing British Sailors was an accident.
Yes they do, unless the capturing British Sailors was an accident.
Iranian Boats May Not Have Made Radio Threat, Pentagon Says
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2008; Page 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 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 criticized Iran's 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. "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, engaged in menacing behavior, Thorp said.
Yet the Pentagon 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 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 -- 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, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates 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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011000692_2.html?sub=AR
But the mystery remains of where the voice that apparently threatened to bomb the US ships came from. The Pentagon has said that it recorded the film and the sound separately, and then stitched them together - a dubious piece of editing even before it became known that the source of the voice could not, with certainty, be linked to the Iranian patrol boats.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2239119,00.html
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