« Previous · Home · Next »
An Alternate view of the Hormuz Incident?
By Charlie
TEHRAN, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iran released a video on Thursday which it said showed its boats did not threaten U.S. navy vessels in the Gulf, countering Washington's account of the event which President George W. Bush called "a provocative act".The video, aired by Iran's Press TV satellite station, gave a completely different version of Sunday's incident in the Strait of Hormuz compared with one released earlier this week by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The video showed an Iranian naval officer in a small craft speaking via radio to a ship which could not be clearly identified.
"Coalition warship 73 this (is an) Iranian navy patrol boat," the officer said in accented English.
"This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and clear," the person replied in what seemed to be an American accent.
You have to hand it to the Iranians, they have good media people. They got this story into the news cycle quickly, and they are targeting US audiences. They assume (correctly in my view) that enough people distrust the US military to create reasonable doubt over the Pentagon report. Therefore, the next time the Iranians pull this stunt and get shot up, they can accuse the US of an act of war or an international incident, and seek to embarrass America on the world stage.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://op-for.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1501
Comments
I'm a little fuzzy on what the supposed differences in the videos are. I see the same blue decked small boats and Iranians wearing, quite properly, their orange life jackets.
As to asking a ship's course and speed, it seems to me irrelevant since the distance is opening and the courses in the shipping lanes are probably pretty well known to most people who aren't out screwing around with the U.S. Navy. With a video camera, too.
OK, hang on...
Do we know whether the Ingraham, Port Royal and Hopper were the ships involved in this incident?
I think you hit the Iranian's motives and tactics just right, but I think yo're a little off on US reaction. I think there is a small portion of the American public that distrusts the US military (and government) and distruats them so much that they would sooner believe Iranian propaganda. This small minority receives a large amount of press coverage. More press coverage than their numbers and opinions warrant. The press coverage makes the small minority appear much larger.
The solid core of America does not distrust the military or our government. There are exceptions to that rule, however.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
Wrong target audience... it's not the American population... it's the international stage. Mr. Santo stated correctly that the vast majority of the American population trusts the military (although I believe the majority would DISTRUST the government... esp. the current administration).
Now all we need is for the Iranians to show that they were just peacefully flying kites when the Americans showed up.
Absolutely right, well, I noticed that in the pentagon video, the ship sounds a warning horn when the Iranian ships are far away in the distance, and in the Iranian video you hear the horn at some point, and they are about the same distance as in the pentagon video. I think Iran released the first minutes of the encounter, whereas the Pentagon released mostly the last minutes. The Pentagon did release the 36 min video on Friday, I wonder where we'll get to see it, I saw absolutely no mention of it on the pentagon's website, which is bizarre.
One more thing, if this was a routine thing like the Iranians claim, why were they video taping it !? The Americans video taped the incident because of the odd behavior of the Iranians, but why did the Revolutionary guard film it ? With beautiful direction might I add. :P
I found the link to the full video, it runs 45 minutes, this is from the pentagon website:
Post a comment
Potential comment conditions listed here. Oh, and you may use basic HTML for formatting.
Interesting video.
If you look closely at 0:44 in that video, you can see the INGRAHAM, PORT ROYAL, and HOPPER from left to right.
Heading away from the Iranian boats.
One small boat is coming back to the camera.
Yep, they are trying to play this one up, but it does not seem to have gotten much airplay here. Too much going on with the primaries...