Hotheads of Hormuz

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.

In early January, this oceanfront resort community is usually a pretty quiet place. This year, however, nothing is “usual.”

This week, hotel rooms are packed, the lobbies are crowded with presidential candidates, their campaign aides, political activists and more than 700 members of the international press corps.

They are all here to participate in a series of debates and the upcoming “First in the South” primary election. I’ve also discovered that among the media are a number of aliens from a parallel universe where nothing seems as it is.

This morning as I stepped off the elevator, I was “ambushed” by several of my Fourth Estate “colleagues.” They wanted my opinion — not about the presidential campaigns, not about the surprise planned deployment of 3,000 more U.S. Marines to Afghanistan — but about last week’s incident in the Hormuz Strait.

Referring to the Jan. 6 episode in which five Iranian patrol boats made high-speed runs toward and around three U.S. warships in the vital, 21-mile-wide waterway, one reporter asked, “Doesn’t this seem suspiciously like the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1965?”

Taken aback, I said, “Not from what I have seen on the U.S. Navy videotape shot from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper. It clearly shows high-speed vessels racing around the cruiser USS Port Royal, and the frigate USS Ingraham. The accompanying soundtrack confirms what President Bush said — that this was a provocative act and that the Iranians were threatening our warships in international waters.”

My answer was clearly insufficient for my inquisitor. “Well, what about the Iranian Navy videotape that shows nothing even remotely threatening?” one asked.

In an effort to end the “interview,” I answered, “Those who believe the Iranian version of any incident are people who hate America or those who believe that every event is part of some grand conspiracy theory. Which one are you?”

Hoping my response was offensive enough to end the line of questioning, I headed out the door. But before I could make good my escape, one of the other correspondents caught up with me. To my surprise, he posed a legitimate query: “Why would the Iranians confront three U.S. warships?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, “but I’ll call some friends — and if I learn anything I can write or talk about, I’ll put it in my column this week.”

Here’s a recap of some of what I learned from current and former military and intelligence officers this week:

• The maritime arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the same gang of thugs that took 15 British Marines and sailors hostage in March 2007 — has been doing this kind of “inspection” of merchant ships and combatants passing through Hormuz Strait for years. It has become “much more aggressive” in the last 10 months. “On more than one occasion, U.S. warships have fired warning shots across the bows,” of IRGC speedboats.

• Throughout this most recent encounter, all three U.S. warships were consistently at least three miles within international waters. One of the IRGC craft displayed an Iranian flag and, as they closed at high speed toward the American vessels, one of the Iranian boats broadcast over the radio in English: “We are coming for you… you will explode in a few minutes.”

• The entire event took place over a half hour and the U.S. ships were at General Quarters and “fully prepared to engage” throughout. At several points in the encounter, the IRGC boats took aggressive action and “maneuvered within 500 yards of our ships,” and two of them dumped “floating objects” in front of the American vessels, forcing them to change course.

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