US Navy nearly fires on Iranian Ships

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by AKIron
What Saxman said. The US Navy would have been justified in firing upon those who made verbal threats imo.

The USN in my opinion had total justification if they had chosen to fire.  The Iranian boats had come within the 200 yards "exclusion zone" of one of the USN ships and they also broadcasted threatening radio messages about blowing up the USN ships and then dropping white colored objects in the patch of one of the USN ships after broadcasting the threat.

The commanders of the USN ships have to be applauded for their restraint.  It was clearly a case of the Revolutionary Guard trying to provoke the USN ships into some kind of action to use as propoganda.  

It's funny to how for all the bluster of the Revolutionary Guard, they turned tail once it became apparent that the USN ships were growing bored with their meager chest thumping.


ack-ack

[Furball]

Originally posted by Saxman
Incidentally Furball, your thread subject is misleading as the Americans never actually fired on the Iranian ships.

Originally posted by Viking
Don't you know what "nearly" means?

In case he missed it

From Mr. Google: -

Definitions of Nearly on the Web:

about: (of actions or states) slightly short of or not quite accomplished;

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by john9001
the US navy had to get a OK from the US state dept before they could blow the Iranians out of the water, as usual the state dept said "lets negotiate".

Source?  None of the reports so far mention that.  The only mention of the State Department in the article is that they won't be officially protesting this incident.



ack-ack

[john9001]

oh sure ack ack, you really expect the state dept to come out and say they forbid US ships to defend themselves?  
That is not the state dept way.

the reason the Cole was hit was because of the state dept, normal navy procedure in a hostile port is to anchor out and accept fuel by barge, the state dept did not want to insult the Yemeni govt by treating them as hostile so the Cole had to tie up to the fuel dock and not have any armed guards on duty.  US state dept= one damaged ship and 18 dead sailors.

US state dept= a bunch of inbred career ivy league idiots that have caused most of the USA's foreign policy problems.

[FrodeMk3]

This bit is from Yahoo! news:

Gates said there had been two or three similar incidents — "maybe not quite as dramatic" — over the past year. He offered no details, but one Navy official said there have been several similar incidents that involved "aggressive maneuvering" by small boats in the Gulf. In one instance, a U.S. Navy vessel fired warning shots across the bow of the small boat, said the official, who requested anonymity because details of the earlier encounters have not been made public.

Here is the link to the whole story:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080107/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_navy_iran

And this part kinda explains' alot.

Quote from the article:
The three U.S. warships — cruiser USS Port Royal, destroyer USS Hopper and frigate USS Ingraham — were headed into the Persian Gulf through the Straits of Hormuz on what the U.S. Navy called a routine passage inside international waters when they were approached by five small high-speed vessels believed to be from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

The Iranians "maneuvered aggressively" in the direction of the U.S. ships, said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf and is based at nearby Bahrain. The U.S. ship commanders took a series of steps toward firing on the boats, which approached to within 500 yards, but the Iranians suddenly fled back toward their shore, Cosgriff said.

Cosgriff was not precise about the U.S. ships' location but indicated they were about three miles outside Iran's territorial waters, which extend 12 miles from its shores, headed in a westerly direction after having passed the narrowest point in the straits.

At one point the U.S. ships received a threatening radio call from the Iranians, "to the effect that they were closing (on) our ships and that the ships would explode — the U.S. ships would explode," Cosgriff said.

"Subsequently, two of these boats were observed dropping objects in the water, generally in the path of the final ship in the formation, the USS Ingraham," he added. "These objects were white, box-like objects that floated. And, obviously, the ship passed by them safely."

The boxes were not retrieved, so U.S. officials do not know whether they posed an actual threat. Cosgriff the U.S. ship commanders were moving through a standard series of actions — including radio calls to the Iranians that went unheeded — but did not reach the point of firing warning shots.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This reads' as something that has come to be regarded as routine or normal activity, that started to get more hostile than normal. Kinda makes you wonder why it got bumped into a headline....?

[Charon]

As a nation state, the likelihood of an Iranian suicide boat attack is virtually nil. Why commit a clear act of war with a speed boat bomb when you have plenty of ASMs and delivery platforms? Especially since you lose those platforms within a handful of hours after the opening shots?

Iran was looking for an over reaction and we didn't play their game.

Charon

[AKIron]

Should have just given the Iranians a bad "sunburn" from our space based lasers.

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by john9001
oh sure ack ack, you really expect the state dept to come out and say they forbid US ships to defend themselves?  
That is not the state dept way.

Ahh...so like all of your sources, you just pulled this one of your arse again?  And you still wonder why most of us think you're just a tool.


ack-ack

[eagl]

Originally posted by AWMac
Good move U.S. Navy.

Do not fire unless fired upon.  Had the U.S. ships been fired upon then it would have been a different matter.

Then everyone would have cried foul for U.S. using excessive force.

You can't please the ignorant here, just entertain the stupid.

Mac

The problem is, they dropped objects in front of the Navy ships...  That's pretty f**king hostile in my book.  What they did is a bit like flying up next to an airplane, maneuvering to a firing position, and launching an unguided rocket past one wing.

Pretty damn hostile because until it's far too late to do anything about it, all you know is that someone just launched something at you that might kill you (and the entire crew for a boat being attacked like this).

I personally think the Iranians were trying to make the statement that if they wished to deny us access to the strait, it would not be difficult.  Mines are cheap, and they just demonstrated an operational capability to toss mines out in front of our ships without *quite* giving us enough excuse to blow them out of the water first.  That means they probably think that they have first-strike capability against our forces in the strait.

I personally think our command and control structure would make this somewhat ineffective since a weapons-free change in ROE would take mere seconds to transmit across the fleet, but there's a chance they could get a lot of mines in place and possibly sink a couple ships before we took any action in response.

[john9001]

Originally posted by Ack-Ack
Ahh...so like all of your sources, you just pulled this one of your arse again?  And you still wonder why most of us think you're just a tool.


ack-ack

yes, i am a tool, i am a hammer.

[AWMac]

Possible boxes dropped by Iranian speed boats.....

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Nilsen
Falling for a provocation would have been a much bigger success eh?

Im afraid I will have to agree with Nilsen.

sometimes the attack you dont make is more defeating to the enemy then the one you do.

Blowing these ships out of the water would have played right into the hands of our enemies. Its what they wanted us to do.

Just like When Isreal didnt respond  with a strike of its own to the Scud missle attacks.
To have done so would have played right into Saddams hands. Its what he calculated Ireal would do. Its what he wanted Isreal to do.
By not responding with an attack of its own Isreal delivered a far greater blow to Saddam then would have been acheived if she had.

Same thing here.
I am afraid that in order for the US forces to respond. There will have to be an actual attack, probably with servicemen killed for us to respond.

Its not the nice thing to do.
And it certainly isnt the popular thing to do among our servicemen Im sure
But considering the current situation.
It is the smart thing to do.

Anything else will be twisted in the media over there to make it look like our fault.
For us to respond there will have to be an absolute undenyable incident clearly and undisputably an act of agression on their part.

[babek-]

Originally posted by Ack-Ack
No we learned that back in the '80s when we started to escort oil carriers in the Gulf.  Back then, it cost the Iranians the majority of their naval forces after we were done.


ack-ack

If I am right, the US forces sunk one iranian frigate, the Sahand, while the attack on a second iranian frigate, the Sabalan, was stopped because the ship was in full fire and seemed to be lost.

But the iranians managed to bring the Sabalan back to Bandar Abbas where ist was repaired and is today back in service.
With it remaining sister-ships Alvand and Alborz.

Also one of the 12 french built Combattante II class missile boats, the Joshan and some smaller speedboats were sunk by the US forces.
Thats surely not "the majority" of the iranian naval forces.

So its wrong to say that in the 80ties the US forces destroyed "the majority" of the iranian naval forces. One frigate and one missile boat were sunk. Another frigate was damaged but the iranians were able to rescue the ship and to bring it back to service.

On the other hand the USS Stark was attacked and 37 US soldiers died in the attack. But not by iranians.

No - the attack was ironicly executed by those who were supported by the USA in those days of the Iran-Iraq-War: By Saddams Iraq.
The same Saddam, who got high tech weapons by the so called civilized world - like french exocet missiles (two of them hit the USS Stark) - or gas weapons to use them against iranian cities (and also iraqi cities like the kurdish Halabja).
The same Saddam who transported his oil via the Persian gulf by his allies, the Kuwaitis. When Iran wanted to stop this by attacking the kuwaiti tanker which had Saddams Oil on board the Kuwaiti tankers got US flags and were escorted by US fforces.

But in those good old 80ties Saddam was the good guy.
So even an attack by Iraq against the USS Stark and even the killing of so many US naval soldiers didnt resulted in something against Saddam.

Finally the Frankenstein Saddam went totally mad and attacked his old ally - Kuwait - and finally the sunnite dominated Iraq was replaced by the shi ite dominated Iraq of today. So no one can say that there is no irony in the development of historical events.

But back to the good old 80ties and the glorious days where US ships helped Saddam to get his oil through the perian gulf on kuwaiti tankers with US flags.

The next dark episode in the Persian Gulf was the killing of 290 helpless and inncoent civilians on the iranian Airbus Flight Number 655 by the USS Vincennes in 1988.

Like today it was said that the USS Vincennes operated in international waters in the Persian Gulf and was attacked by iranian naval units. In all this chaos the Vincennes crew made their mistake by shooting missiles on the civilian aircraft which was on its normal flight path.

Iran always said that the Vincennes was not in international waters but had entered iranian waters.

1991 US Admiral William Crowe admitted that the iranian statement was true: The USS Vincennes was inside iranian territory when it launched the missiles.

Today we got the news that 5 mighty iranian ships surrounded 3 US naval units.
Interesting picture: 5 small motor boats are "surrounding" 3 US ships ????

Maybe we have to wait 3 years like Iran had to wait after the Vincennes-event until an US Admiral tells, what really happened.

[AWMac]

Another bitter Euro posts....



Mac



Oh almost forgot....

IN

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Viking
If I'm not mistaken the Iranians have just as much right to be in international waters as your navy has.

And that is exactly the way it would have been spun in the middle east media had we "blew them out of the water"
the headlines would read somethign like this

"Iranian Boats patroling (or on manuvers) in international waters Fired on and destroyed by unprovoked US Warships"

Course we would make our own claim to the contrary.
But which headline over there is going tp be beleived?

They wanted us to fire on them. It was a trap. And we didnt fall for it.

Really it was a no loose situation for them.

Had we fired. We'd be painted as The great amarican satan destroying these poor little boats and murdering their crew.

If we dont fire they show they can "Poke the Tiger"

Im sure it will be looked upon with much amusement by the population over there. But even they have to know that the Tiger let itself be poked.