On Jan. 6, Iranian patrol boats and American naval vessels had an encounter in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Over a third of all global shipments of oil—about 17 million barrels of crude oil—pass through this waterway daily.
According to U.S. military accounts, five armed Iranian speedboats approached three U.S. Navy warships in international waters and maneuvered aggressively while there were radio transmissions of threats that the American ships would be blown up. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the Iranians acted in a “reckless and dangerous” manner. President Bush accused Iran of having made a “dangerous gesture” and that “there will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple.” Bush added “all options are on the table to secure our assets. Iran continues to be a threat to world peace.”
The day after the incident, the Pentagon released a video clip to support its claim of Iranian aggression. A voice on the clip says menacingly: “I am coming to you … you will explode after a few minutes.”
On Jan. 10, Iran released its own video of the incident, showing the Iranian patrol boats approaching three ships and asking them to identify themselves. Iran said that this was a “normal inspection of vessels,” which is a routine occurrence. The Strait of Hormuz is right off the coast of Iran and it is normal for Iranian boats to patrol the area.
The Fars Iranian news agency wrote that the U.S. accusations were baseless and part of an anti-Iran propaganda campaign prior to Bush’s trip to the region. A Revolutionary Guard official said, “Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the Navy vessels were made from file pictures and the audio was fabricated.”
The Pentagon immediately dismissed the assertion that the video had been fabricated. But it did concede that the voice heard in the clip had been recorded separately from the video images and merged with it later. The Pentagon also was forced to acknowledge that the voice on its tape was not directly traceable to Iranian military and that they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from shore or from another ship nearby.
U.S. Navy and Iranian vessels have come into contact in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz many times before. They have communicated by radio and no incidents have occurred.
The propaganda of the Pentagon and the bourgeois media never address the real issue. What are U.S. warships doing seven miles from the Iranian coast anyway? Why should Iran not be concerned about the presence of U.S. military vessels right off its shores when the United States has repeatedly threatened Iran with bombing attacks that would be launched from the sea? What gives legitimacy to U.S. imperialism to go anywhere and terrorize other countries?
Washington’s propaganda reverses the role of aggressor and victim. The country threatened by aggression and trying to protect its border—Iran—is depicted as a menace. The aggressor with a terrifying amount of destructive capability—the United States—is depicted as a victim of the aggression of a few small boats.
How could five patrol boats be a threat to the heavily armed U.S. Navy—the world’s most advanced Navy? If the U.S. warships had sensed the slightest threat from the Iranian boats, they would not have hesitated to shoot or destroy the tiny patrol boats.
The timing of this episode was just before Bush’s major trip to the Middle East. One of his stated objectives is to present Iran as a threat to its neighbors, create an alliance against it and justify the presence of the U.S. forces in the Gulf.
The toppling of the Iranian regime has been part of an ongoing effort by Washington since the 1979 revolution in Iran. As each U.S. justification for aggression against Iran crumbles due to lack of substance, new ones pop up. This recent incident is not the product of Iran’s stated willingness to defend itself against U.S. aggression, but of the continued U.S. propaganda against it.
