Are We Swift-Boating Iran's Small Boats?

A fun mental exercise for foreign policy enthusiasts: watch a Republican debate. Now hit your stopwatch and see how long it takes for one (or all) to bring up World War III or Hitler. Usually it's a matter of minutes. If you're lucky, someone just might bring up the "gates of hell."

According to the Republicans vying for the Oval Office, Iran was lucky we didn't bomb them back into the Stone Age last Sunday. "I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing," Fred Thompson said, to the chuckle of the South Carolinians in the audience.

Say what? First, this is an insane reaction to an incident whose details we know little about. The Iranians -- even their despised Revolutionary Guards -- are not al-Qaeda and to lump them into the same camp as suicide bombers is akin to pinning 9/11 on Saddam.

Second, this is not unusual. While yes, many wars do seem to ignite from attacks against U.S. naval vessels at sea, as the Council on Foreign Relations' Walter Russell Mead points out in the Wall Street Journal, let's not get worked up over nothing. Ships passing through the Persian Gulf fire warning shots all the time. The U.S. navy even admitted the little white boxes discarded from the Iranian vessel posed no threat. And the channel used by local ships is accessible to any renegade radio troll within a hundred miles who wants to shout Don Imus-like obscenities over the air.

Third, remember 1988. That is when U.S. warships sank an Iranian frigate and shelled two Persian Gulf oil platforms near the Strait of Hormuz in response to a mine attack against the USS Samuel B. Roberts, an American frigate. A few months later, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial jet carrying 290 passengers and crew. The American government says it mistook the plane for a military fighter jet but has always refused to apologize or admit any wrongdoing. Yet even this encounter did not spark World War III.

Finally, the Strait of Hormuz is not Haifa Street, where you have junior or mid-level NCOs making split-second decisions to pull a trigger that could have strategic-level consequences. Rather, on the high seas there is a very rigid set of rules of engagement and protocols of the right of innocent passage regarding the use of flares and warning fires. Those who give the orders to engage are very senior level. That said, the navy captain need only determine that an oncoming ship shows hostile intent, as he will not want to take the first hit. Ships have a right to anticipatory self-defense, as it were. As one Pentagon official told me, no captain has ever been fired for defending his ship but some have been relieved of their command for showing laxness.

So what's the takeaway from this incident? Probably nothing will change insofar as U.S.-Iranian relations are concerned. This will not scotch the limited progress made with the Iranians on Iraq. Nor will it help those moderates in either Washington and Tehran pushing for greater rapprochement. Like Vegas, what happens at sea between us and Iran will likely stay at sea.

Comments

[RibEye]

The Neocon/Zionists would love for armagedon to be here tomorrow but other poeple's sons die for it. The Arab world having no identity other than islam would like to see Persian influence maintaned at the lowest. AIPAC owning the gov't and the media, Saudis also owning the Bush family. It works for both.
Iran is the perfect target, who cares about their people. We ignore what dictators do to their own poeple as long as it profits. And here are the results.

[RibEye]

All this Iran demonization as a cause and effect. Cause, Neocon/Zionists

[RibEye]

Nice article, at least somebody remmebers the Navy in 1988 shooting down Iranian passenger plane, 290 innocent people killed, 70 of them children.
Iran is not a threat to the US or Israel or the western world. Why would they commit self-destruction?
The Iranian people are the biggest threat to the oppressive islamic regime. Staying in power is the number one goal of the regime.
But sure takes the heat off of OBL and oh let's give weapons to Saudi and Israel to add more peace.
Cold hard truth ignored by MSM....THE PERSIAN PEOPLE have suffered more and longer and still are more than anyone else from islam. Ask the Iranian people, the regime wants to destroy Persian pre-islamic history and replace it with islam....cold....hard....truth.

[sjduskin]

This whole thing smacks of Dick Cheney inventing a pretext. When I went through those straits 25 years ago, we had the same things happen, and it was no big deal. In fact, back then we were harassed by both Iranian and Iraqi small craft. It comes with the territory.

And now the Navy Times reports that the "threatening message" comes from a joker who broadcasts on any open channel - the American sailors just laugh it off. Bush and Cheney see this as their last real chance to start WW III on behalf of the Saud Family, and wipe out the Shi'ites for good.

The Pentagon officials spreading this propaganda ought to be court-martialed...

[Nonamnesiac]

We're not swift-boating the Iran patrol boats, we're Gulf of Tonkining them. (The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed nearly unanimously by Congress to justify the esclation in Vietnam and was based on a supposed attack on the US Navy by a Vietnamese boat that we learned subsequently, once boots were on the ground, never took place). The US Navy, which is patrolling in the water right on Iran's border and which has more firepower than all of Iran combined is really threatened by the Iranian Navy. Are we getting ready for another act of national cowardice like the one in Iraq in which we attempt to beat into submission a nation with a population 1/4 of ours and 1/1000th of our military and economic strength -- similar to a well trained martial artist in his prime beating senseless a ten year old, with the martial artist using sophisticated weaponry and body armor to do so -- again based on a transparent lie?

[TXfemmom]

My son was a Naval Officer, and he says that those pictures are from a NAVAL EXERCISE, that they have periodically, and that the guys who are supposed to be Iranians, are U.S. NAVAL PERSONNEL, with regulation SAFETY GEAR ON, IF ONE LOOKS AT THE PICTURES CLOSELY.

[ResidentChimp]

The fallacy of your argument is that the definition of Swift-Boating is the process of bringing the truth to light.

[escobar]

Here are ships with every possible form of advanced weapon.
This is all for show to legitimize a war.
Bush is in Israel getting his pep talk and recieving his marching orders.

[UltraClassic]

Don't forget about the USS Cole. The navy has not and neither should you.

[lisakaz]

I do believe they are in the process of manufacturing a war -- to either help some Republican win an election or to justify Bu$h refusing to leave next January, should a Rethug lose.

I hope it isn't fallen for again, but given people like Hillary supported Kyl-Lieberman, pols seem ready to be stupid again.

[joebaggadonuts]

I hate to say it but it seems like the chicken-hawks put this out to test the waters for another gulf of tonkin type incident. "Will the public buy it?" was the question they needed answered. They also need to know what the public will do after the US retaliates.

Predictably, the R's will fall into line and the rest of the country will wonder WTF is really happening. That's not a clear "mandate" for action by the decider. After 9/11 things were different. The country sucked it up and let the decider do whatever he thought was good for him. It's not that way now.

Good on us.

[normathumb]

What they haven't lied about, they have been tragically wrong about. They also never admit a mistake. The top of this administration should be packed off to the Hague. When that is done, they should be brought back and tried for the rape of the Constitution. They are looking for their own Persian Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Like a bad case of arrested development, little boys telling bigger more outrageous lies to distract from and cover up their earlier lies. It is impossible to reconcile the first lies with the middle lies and the current lies of this junta. First, the Democrats have been too adventurist in foriegn affairs and we mustn't engage in nation building. Then, we don't do quagmires, this will be months, not years. All the way to, we need to look at this like a Korean type long term engagement.
Shame on the Democrats for allowing the clock to run out on these bloodthirsty warmongers. My biggest fear is the reason the Democrats aren't going after Bush more agressively is because they want to further exploit the precedents in law this sock puppet and his handlers have put in place.

[mpgarr]

I have to say that I don't necessarily trust the information our government put out about this incident--it sorta seems that Bush is looking for a Gulf of Tonkin type of situation to justify taking action against Iran---this "administration" in my book has ZERO CREDIBILITY when it comes to things like this.

[balance]

Interesting, but the suggested assertion that Iran wouldn't have retaliated if US Navy sank those speedboats is in dire need of a situation update.

This is 2008, not 1988. Even if Iranian radicals were itching for revenge after the sinking of their frigate or the downing of their passenger plane, it was hard for them to retaliate back then.

Now that we, unfortunately, have 100,000+ US troops next door in Iraq, and Iran has lots of sympathizers and connections high in the Iraqi political structure, there are greater means for retaliation.

It would be a scandal if the captains of those ships were punished for holding fire.
They saved American lives in Iraq by being level headed.

Of course Bush Jr may have rejoiced at the furtherence of needless bloodshed. And of course Iran, Exxon, Saudi Arabia, BP, Shell, Texaco, Gazprom, and many other oil profiteers would have rejoiced. Turmoil on the high seas in the Straits of Hormuz would have popped oil up to 150+ dollars per barrel!

Yes, it would be irresponsible for right-wingers to be so cavalier about opening fire. But isn't that what chicken-hawk right-wingers are good at? --Ie: Getting Other people killed?

And history blatantly shows that this is why they shouldn't be in charge.

[jhamm1]

Indeed, "what happens at sea stays at sea", insofar as both sides are willing to evade the prospects of an allout war. However, if conservatives in the white house are simply pushing for an excuse to ignite an all-out invasion via a secondary recreation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, then you can expect that in the untimely event that a luckless Iranian sailor so much as sneezes within a two-mile vicinity of a U.S. warship, the United States will catapult the significance of such "provocation" to the extent of touting the presence an immenent act of war, justifying the forthcoming invasion as unavoidable on the grounds that "they shot first".

At worst, Reagan probably intended our initial skirmishes in the Gulf in 1988 as a means with which to flex our collective military muscle, so to speak. However, with the current presence of an irate toddler in the oval office with a trigger happy mentality which continually touts the "evil" status of Iran in conjunction with ongoing threats for the country in question to "comply or else", our naval presence on the Iranian coast signifies little more than an ongoing observatory in which to await the sighting of Iranian gunboats in the process of perpetuating that "one false move" capable of justifying the current administration's long awaited plans to undertake an allout invasion.