One side....
Persian Gulf Incident a Part of US Propaganda against Iran
TEHRAN (FNA)- The United States' hue and cry about the incident in the Strait of Hormuz serves as a part of Washington's psychological warfare against Iran, Iranian parliament speaker said in the wake of a wave of western media reports about an alleged confrontation between Iranian and US navy vessels in the Persian Gulf on Saturday. Western media said on Monday that five Iranian speedboats warned three US navy ships to keep away from the Islamic Republic's territorial waters in the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf over the weekend.
Pentagon officials said that no shots were fired during the encounter, which occurred Saturday in international waters adjacent to Iranian borders, but meantime pointed out that the US Captain was on the verge of issuing the required orders for opening fire on Iranian naval vessels patrolling the area.The Iranian parliament speaker reminded that Iran is located next to the Persian Gulf waters and that a part of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz is within Iranian borders.
"Thus, if anyone should protest against others' intervention in the Strait of Hormuz, it should be Iran and not the US which has dispatched its warships to the Persian Gulf region from several thousand kilometers away," Gholam Ali Haddad Adel said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps confirmed that their naval forces were involved in the incident with US naval ships but said "nothing out of the ordinary" took place.
"Nothing out of the ordinary happened between IRGC's patrol forces and the US boats in the international waters in the Strait of Hormuz," an informed source in the IRGC's naval force told FNA.
"IRGC's naval vessels were patrolling the Straits of Hormuz and patrolling the incoming and outgoing vessels into the Persian Gulf," the source added.
"Three American warships were entering regional waters and as usual they were identified and questioned.
"The American boats, just as in the past, introduced themselves and gave the (identification) number of their boats and continued on their way without any unusual occurrence."http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8610180498 ...........................and the other side....
Iran Denies Threat to Blow Up US ShipsTEHRAN (AFP) - Iran yesterday rejected US charges that its naval forces threatened to blow up American ships in the Strait of Hormuz, amid renewed tensions ahead of US President George W. Bush's visit to the region.
US defense officials said five speedboats from the naval forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guards menaced three US warships in the strategic waterway on Sunday, radioing a threat to blow them up.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the incident as "provocative" and "dangerous", amid fears such an insolated encounter could spark a major confrontation between the two foes.But Iranian officials expressed bewilderment over the US version of events, saying the encounter was a routine question of identification that ended with nothing special to report.
-----------------------------------------------
A US Defense Department official had quoted the Iranian radio transmission as saying: "I'm coming at you and you will blow up in a couple of minutes."
------------------------
"It was provocative, and that kind of provocation is dangerous. I would sincerely hope that the Iranians would refrain from any such activity," Rice told the BBC's Arabic service in an interview.
Iran is "the single greatest threat to the kind of Middle East we all want to see," she added in an interview to the Jerusalem Post and the Ynet website.http://www.irannewsdaily.com/home.asp?home=truehttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/07/america/NA-GEN-US-Navy-Iran.phpInternational Herald Tribune
Pentagon says Iranian boats threatened to blow up 3-ship U.S. Navy convoy
The Associated Press
Monday, January 7, 2008
WASHINGTON: An Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near Iranian waters, then vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, the top U.S. Navy commander in the area said Monday.------------------
Bush administration officials complained that the Iranian actions amounted to a dangerous provocation, but one private analyst said the Iranians may have believed they were acting defensively in a narrow waterway that is heavily trafficked by commercial ships, including oil vessels.
---------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------------
"We take this deadly seriously," Cosgriff told a Pentagon news conference via video link from Bahrain.
He recalled the October 2000 terrorist attack on a U.S. warship, the USS Cole, in Yemen's Aden harbor by a small boat laden with explosives; 17 sailors died in that attack, which nearly sank the Cole.----------------------------------------------------
At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States would "confront" hostile Iranian actions against U.S. interests and those of its allies in the region and called on Iran to halt "any provocative actions."
"We are going to confront Iran's behavior where it threatens us, where it threatens our allies, where it threatens the integrity of the international systems that have been set up to facilitate international commerce and finance," McCormack told reporters.Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
Notes:
International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
