IRAN US GULF CONFRONTATION: FULL RUNDOWN ON STATE OF PLAY
January 12th 2008 06:35
IRAN US GULF FAKE FOOTAGE FIASCO: DOUBTS INCREASE OVER IRANIAN BOAT THREATS TO US WARSHIP
Doubts intensified on Thursday night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday.
The Guardian reported that Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident.
Several news sources reported that senior navy officials had conceded that the voice threatening to blow up the US warships in a matter of minutes could have come from another ship in the region, or even from shore.
IRAN US GULF FAKE FOOTAGE FIASCO: HOW THE EVENT AND DEGREES OF CONFIDENCE PLAYED OUT
On Saturday, January 12, Mike Nizza, a former New York Times web editor and now editor of The Lede website, posted a series of updates about the “Degrees of Confidence on US-Iran Naval Incident.”
Update: The list of those who are less than fully confident in the Pentagon’s video/audio mashup of aggressive manoeuvres by Iranian boats near American warships in the Strait of Hormuz now includes the Pentagon itself.
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.
Update: ABC News reported more details from the spokesperson for the US admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet, who confirmed the above and explained why they concluded that the threat came from the Iranian boats:
“It happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”
Update: At a news conference, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates about his level of “confidence in the U.S. military version” of the incident. He was unequivocal: “I have no question whatsoever about the report on this incident from the captains of the ships and also from the video itself”.
Update: 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 US, and throughout the Mediterranean, Ch 16 is used pretty professionally, i.e., chatter is limited to ship handling 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, especially 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.
“I hope everybody exercises great caution here and doesn’t jump to conclusions.”
Update: President Bush was criticised for doing the opposite. According to The Washington Post, “some diplomatic and military officials in Washington” said that Mr Bush’s statements on arriving in Israel Wednesday “inflated the significance of the brief incident” in the strait.
In his remarks, Mr. Bush warned Iran that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”
Update: Meanwhile, the video images that were released by the Pentagon came in for some more contradiction from Iran, which has contended that the US was exaggerating a workaday encounter between two naval powers in the Persian Gulf: A competing video purporting to show Sunday’s incident from the Iranian side was broadcast today on Iranian television.
Here is how the semi-official Fars News Agency described it: “The four-minute video showed an Iranian commander in a speedboat contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the U.S. vessels and state their purpose. ‘Coalition warship number 73 this is an Iranian patrol,’ the Iranian commander is heard to say in good English. ‘This is coalition warship number 73. I am operating in international waters,’ comes the reply.”
Update: Agence France-Presse noted one way that Iran’s video seemed to match up with the US account of the encounter: all three US vessels involved in the incident are seen in the video.
Update: The Associated Press was sceptical, saying that “the short clip likely did not show Sunday’s entire encounter.”
Update: The Iranian video went online. A reader using the name Hamid Pasha sent The Lede a link to an English-language Iranian web site, PressTV.com, that has posted the Iranian video.
The clip is a bit over 5 minutes long. The first few minutes are views of coalition warships shot from smaller boats (if you thought the motorboats seemed to be moving fast in the American video, wait until you see the bow waves on the warships). In the latter portion, we see an Iranian on the boat using a microphone handset to hail “coalition warship 73″ by radio, in fairly clear but accented English, and we hear responses in an American voice.
The video clearly covers only part of an encounter, perhaps the encounter though there’s no obvious way a layman would be able to know, and it cuts off abruptly after the American voice is heard answering several inquiries from the Iranian by saying simply that the coalition ship is operating in international waters. We don’t see or hear what happened next.
IRAN US GULF FAKE FOOTAGE FIASCO: FORMER CIA ANALYST URGES CIA TO NOT DO BUSH’S BIDDING
Ray McGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer, then a current intelligence analyst at CIA, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
He also works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He wrote an article for Consortium.News and this is part of what he wrote:
“When the Tonkin Gulf incident took place in early August 1964, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice refers to as ‘the bowels of the agency.’
As a current intelligence analyst responsible for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those responsible for analysis of Vietnam and China.
Out of that experience I must say that, as much as one might be tempted to laugh at the bizarre theatrical accounts of Sunday’s incident involving small Iranian boats and US naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, this is—as my old Russian professor used to insist—nothing to laugh.
The situation is so reminiscent of what happened—and didn’t happen—from August 2-4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin and in Washington (that) it is in no way funny.
At the time, the US had about 16,000 troops in South Vietnam. The war that was ‘justified’ by the Tonkin Gulf resolution of August 7, 1964, led to a build up of 535,000 US troops in the late Sixties, 58,000 of whom were killed—not to mention the estimated two million Vietnamese who lost their lives by then and in the ensuing 10 years.
…. Given the confusion last Sunday in the Persian Gulf, you need to remember that a ‘known known’ in the form of a non-event has already been used to sell a major war – Vietnam. It is not only in retrospect that we know that no attack occurred that night.
Those of us in intelligence, not to mention President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy all knew full well that the evidence of any armed attack on the evening of August 4, 1964, the so-called ‘second’ Tonkin Gulf incident, was highly dubious.
But it fit the president’s purposes, so they lent a hand to facilitate escalation of the war.
It is my view that the only thing that has prevented Bush and Cheney from attacking Iran so far has been the strong opposition of the uniformed military, including the Joint Chiefs.
As the misadventure last Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz shows, our senior military officers need all the help they can get from intelligence officers more concerned with the truth than with ‘keeping lines open to the White House’ and doing its bidding.
So, you inheritors of the honourable profession of current intelligence – I’m thinking of you, Rochelle, and you, Rick – don’t let them grind you down.
If you’re working in the bowels of the CIA and you find that your leaders are cooking the intelligence once again into a recipe for casus belli, think long and hard about your oath to protect the Constitution. Should that oath not transcend any secrecy promise you had to accept as a condition of employment?
By sticking your neck out, you might be able to prevent 10 years of unnecessary war.”
Asia’s leading enterprise IT publisher, Fairfax Business Media Asia, has expanded its online team with the appointment of a new online editor, Zafar Hasan Anjum.
Anjum previously helped launch Singapore’s leading classifieds website, Mocca and was its content editor. He has also worked as web editor-sub editor for Singapore’s second most read newspaper website, Todayonline.
Fairfax Business Media Asia’s publisher and regional manager, Andrew Smart, said Hasan’s appointment was part of a strategy to develop the online properties of its four established print magazines in Asia: MIS Asia, CIO Asia, Computerworld Singapore, and Computerworld Malaysia..
Fairfax Business Media Asia is also the official IT media partner of the World Congress on Information Technology to be held in Kuala Lumpur May 18-22, 2008.
This will be the world’s premier information and communications technology forum in 2008 and Fairfax Business Media Asia will provide comprehensive coverage through its print and online properties.
Hasan joins experienced Fairfax Business Media Asia web producer Ong Chun Yeow to review and upgrade its websites with multi-media content and to expand and integrate its digital publishing capabilities.
Andrew Smart said Fairfax operated an integrated media model with print, online and event channels and it was progressively strengthening all of these channels, including online.
He said, "Integrating these channels empowers our audiences to engage us as, when and how they wish. It also allows our clients to use multiple, highly targeted ways to connect with our audiences throughout their campaign lifecycles."
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