In only my second posting on this blog, in December, I wrote: “So the military option is still on the table, says Bush, and – forget the nukes! - it will be used in response to provocations by the Iranians, say his neocon supporters.”
And what’s been reported today? From CNN:
“The U.S. military reported Monday on a "significant" confrontation involving five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats that "harassed and provoked" three U.S. naval ships in international waters over the weekend.
“U.S. military officials said the incident occurred early Sunday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf.
“The five Iranian ships made "threatening" moves -- in one case coming within 200 yards of a U.S. ship, the U.S. officials said.
“In one radio transmission, the Iranians told the U.S. Navy: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," the U.S. military officials told CNN.
“When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said.”
Phew! A close call. But how many more close calls can the region survive? As I said in the earlier post, God help us all if World War III breaks out between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
4 comments:
Surely with the extremely low level of support the Iraq war and President Bush have at present, he won't be able to initiate war against Iran?
And surely, the new President, whoever that maybe, won't have the backing to start a new war the likelihood is he (or maybe she) will be voted in on a wave of anti-war sentiment that appears to be prevelant in the country making an attack on Iran extremely difficult, albeit not impossible!
This newstory was reported on BBC R5 and the reporter mentioned that perhaps it was a statement of intent of what the Iranians are capable of - especially with Bush's visit imminent.
Perhaps it was a statement of intent by the Iranians, perhaps it was an innocent mistake exaggerated by the US Navy or perhaps it was manufactured wholesale by Pentagon propagandists a la the Gulf of Tonkin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
As for the antiwar mood in America, sadly such moods can change in an instant. If, for example, hypothetically, the US public were told that Iranian boats had launched an unprovoked attack on US ships and killed several young American sailors, I can guarantee you that vast swathes of the US public - both Democrat and Republic - would begin baying for retaliatory Persian blood.
- The Radical
If Iran did launch an unprovoked attack, could a politician justify NOT launching an attack? Iran would've have bought it onto themselves.
The question is, however, will Iran launch such a strike and will it indeed be 'unprovoked' (just because the Americans and their media acolytes say so?)
I referred earlier to the Gulf of Tonkin incident - and linked to the Wikipedia entry. Only four decades ago, a Democratic president (LBJ) used a fictional incident (an alleged yet spurious attack on US ships by North Vietnamese vessels inside the Gulf of Tonkin) to justify launching the illegal, brutal and imperial Vietnam War.
Is it beyond the current lot (Bush, Cheney, Rice et al) to do the same? As I said in my earlier post on Iran, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter and current adviser to Barack Obama, has claimed in congressional testimony that such a US-induced or even US-fabricated provocation to start a war with Iran is quite possible.
As for the blood lust of the US public, we always seem to give the US the unique and unassailable 'right' to strike against its perceived enemies, in 'retaliation', but we never accord that right to America's enemies. How hypocritical!
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