PressCoverage

thank god for independent media... but, perhaps this is all just "knee-jerk" reaction...

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel
...


WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) - Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a "battle at sea", new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of the incident includes the revelation that U.S. officials spliced the audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident. That suggests that the threatening message may not have come in immediately after the initial warning to Iranian boats from a U.S. warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former U.S. naval officer that non-official chatter is common on the channel used to communicate with the Iranian boats and testimony from the commander of the U.S. 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the U.S. warships involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the U.S. version of the incident is a video released by Iran Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships.

The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat." He then requests the "side numbers" of the U.S. warships. A voice with a U.S. accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters."

The dramatic version of the incident reported by U.S. news media throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats, apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy, had made moves to attack three U.S. warships entering the Strait and that the U.S. commander had been on the verge of firing at them when they broke off.

Typical of the network coverage was a story by ABC's Jonathan Karl quoting a Pentagon official as saying the Iranian boats "were a heartbeat from being blown up".

Bush administration officials seized on the incident to advance the portrayal of Iran as a threat and to strike a more threatening stance toward Iran. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley declared Wednesday that the incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and Iranian forces". President George W. Bush declared during his Mideast trip Wednesday that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked U.S. ships and repeated his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace".

PressCoverage

once again... your government earned the skepticism...

here's Iran's official, much less sabre-rattling take:

Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar called Western news reports that the boats threatened to blow up the U.S. warships "mischief."

"(Iranian) navy units ... asked them to identify themselves. They responded accordingly and continued their path," the official IRNA news agency quoted Najjar as saying.

He said the encounter was normal.

"The identification of vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian navy units is a natural occurrence," IRNA quoted Najjar as saying. "Islamic Republic of Iran navy units always put questions to passing vessels and warships at the Strait of Hormuz and they need to identify themselves. This is in accordance with the normal procedures."

PressCoverage

i'll acknowledge this source is a Newshogs blogger, but he raised a decent point... the voice doesn't even sound Persian? :

The section of the released tape which contains the actual threat to "blow up" anyone, as I noted yesterday, comes at the very end and is very much unconnected in any causal sense to the rest of it. The sound is clearer and less cluttered by background noise, while there is no video accpmpanying it - the only such section of the tape - just an ominously black screen. The accent of the alleged Iranian threatener is way wrong. I've known several Iranians well in the UK and their accents when speaking English were all very different from that on the tape - less gutteral.

Regular reader Amir, an Iranian, writes in comments to my previous post:

I also listened to the end of the clip. The dialect is not Persian for sure. For my ears it is more an Arab speaking in English. I expect from someone speaking from a small boat sailing in top speed in the open sea and not in a room to speak with trembling voice with lots of noise from surroundings (they are supposed to be sitting in a speed boat). The guy was near one of the most dangerous sea vessels in the world and receiving warning calls and spoke so calm! I don't believe it.

Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American writing at the HuffPo, also thinks the audio chunk at the end of the DoD's release is faked - and again points to the accent.

the person speaking doesn't have an Iranian accent and moreover, sounds more like Boris Karloff in a horror movie than a sailor in the elite branch of Iran's military. (The tape is also separate from any video.) Any Iranian can immediately identify Persian-accented English, particularly if the speaker has had little contact with the West, as is the case with Revolutionary Guardsmen and sailors. Iranians, you see, have difficulty with two consonants such as "p" and "l" next to each other; even Iranians who have lived in America for years will often pronounce "please" as "peh-leeze", or in this case, "explode" as "exp-eh-lode". On the tape, "explode" is pronounced perfectly, albeit as if the speaker was a villain addressing a superhero.

PressCoverage

Degrees of Confidence on U.S.-Iran Naval Incident
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Unnamed Pentagon officials said on Wednesday that the threatening voice heard in the audio clip, which was released on Monday night with a disclaimer that it was recorded separately from the video images and merged with them later, is not directly traceable to the Iranian military.

...

Earlier on Wednesday, a reader posted a comment on The Lede claiming to be a former Navy officer with experience in the Strait of Hormuz and offering an explanation for how easily a mistake could have been made by Navy personnel trying to sift through radio transmissions filled with chatter:

All ships at sea use a common UHF frequency, Channel 16, also known as “bridge-to bridge” radio. Over here, near the U.S., and throughout the Mediterranean, Ch. 16 is used pretty professionally, i.e., chatter is limited to shiphandling issues, identifying yourself, telling other ships what your intentions are to avoid mishaps, etc.

But over in the Gulf, Ch. 16 is like a bad CB radio. Everybody and their brother is on it; chattering away; hurling racial slurs, usually involving Filipinos (lots of Filipinos work in the area); curses involving your mother; 1970’s music broadcast in the wee hours (nothing odder than hearing The Carpenters 50 miles off the coast of Iran at 4 a.m.)

On Ch. 16, esp. in that section of the Gulf, slurs/threats/chatter/etc. is commonplace. So my first thought was that the “explode” comment might not have even come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser monitoring the events at a shore facility.

The commenter, who signed his posting “SWO officer,” went on to say, “I hope everybody exercises great caution here and doesn’t jump to conclusions.”

PatsFanInVa

I thought we're already using all our faked-event dollars perpetuating the myth of the lunar landing...

PressCoverage

well, i save mine for stories that have basis, a track record, and verification...

PressCoverage

anyhow, while this offering doesn't refer to the specifics, it does offer a bit of perspective to consider in all of the drama:

Provocation in the Strait of Hormuz
By Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

The report in The Times, in fact, tells you everything you need to know, albeit in a conclusionless form. US Warships are in the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz, through which all warships must pass to enter the Gulf, is the same passage through which all oil-bearing ships must pass bringing oil to the US. And "Oil prices on world markets spiked briefly on the news, which was first reported by CNN." That pretty much says it all.

US Navy warships are parked a few miles off the coast of Iran. They are there, apparently, to protect oil shipping lanes into and out of the Persian Gulf. Tensions are mounting. If provocation is at issue, those facts must remain front and center. If Iranian warships ever made it as close to the American coastline as US warships now lie to Iranian shores, our military would in all likelihood attack them. Iran is not attacking our warships - parked on their doorstep.

The US State Department last year warned Iran "not to interfere with US interests in the region." What the State Department did not explain to the American people is what interests average Americans have in the region. The answer to that question is, likely none. That leads to the next question: whose interests is the American Navy protecting in the Persian Gulf? The owners of the oil tankers, apparently. The American people are the end consumers; we pay what's marked on the pump. Bluntly stated, the United States Navy appears to be in the Persian Gulf to protect the interests of US-based oil businesses, not the interests of the American people. Incidentally, the second-largest deposits of oil in the world lie beneath the soil of Iraq, so the same formula applies there as well.

Could Iranian forces sink an American ship a few miles off the Iranian coast? Yes, although it is highly unlikely that they would say beforehand, "I am coming at you, and you will explode in a few minutes." Would such a sinking take the lives of many good American sailors? Yes, it would. Such a sinking and the attendant loss of life would affect the best interests of the American people. The American armed forces are the true interest of the American people. For too long, the American people have turned a blind eye to their interest: their service members. It's time to bring our soldiers home and let the gas station mind its own business.

PatsFanInEaglesLand

And what you have posted have none of those. I guess we take the official news agency of Iran at face value, now Un-freakin-believable!

Huffington Post

EDIT: And now truthout, lol!

PressCoverage

actually, Bushie, i posted an AP story... now, do you have anything to offer regarding the capitulation by the Pentagon that the threatening voice heard in the audio clip was released on Monday night with a disclaimer that it was recorded separately from the video images and merged with them later?

weswelker#83

I already posted the BBC video this morning , you know it could have been edited ,iranians can edit videos too :

BBC Video :
Iranian Boat



If you need the bbc article ,i will post it too.