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International News Title: Caught With Our Pants Down in the Gulf The official story of those captured US sailors makes no sense Your bullshit-ometer should be making an awful racket in response to the shifting explanations given for the twenty-four-hour Iranian hostage scare involving two US Navy boats intercepted in the Gulf. First they told us “at least one of the boats” had experienced a “mechanical failure.” Then they said the boats had run out of fuel, although it wasn’t clear if they meant both boats. Then they said “there was no mechanical problem.” Then they claimed that the two crews had somehow not communicated with the military command, although “they could not explain how the military had lost contact with not one but both of the boats.” As the New York Times reported: “Even as Mr. Kerry was describing the release on Wednesday morning, American military officials were offering new explanations about how the two 49-foot patrol boats, formally called riverine command boats, had ended up in Iranian territorial waters while cruising from Kuwait to Bahrain.” And they still haven’t explained it – or any of the other distinctly odd circumstances surrounding this incident. The best they could do was have an anonymous Navy officer aver “When you’re navigating in those waters, the space around it gets pretty tight.” However, as the Times put it: “But that is hardly a new problem, and the boats’ crews would almost surely have mapped out their course in advance, paying close attention to the Iranian boundary waters. And each boat has radio equipment on board, so it was unclear how the crews suddenly lost communication with their base unless they were surrounded by Iranian vessels before they could alert their superiors.” We are told they were on a “training mission” – but what kind of mission? The Washington Post adds a helpful detail by telling us that “The vessels, known as riverine command boats, are agile and often carry Special Operations forces into smaller bodies of water.” Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Amid all the faux outrage coming from the neocons and their enablers in the media over the alleged “humiliation” of the US – Iran “paraded” the sailors in their media! They made one of the sailors apologize! The Geneva Conventions were violated! – hardly anyone in this country is asking the hard questions, first and foremost: what in heck were those two boats doing in Iranian waters? And if you believe they somehow “drifted” within a few miles of Farsi Island, where a highly sensitive Iranian military base is located, then you probably think there’s a lot of money just waiting for you in a Nigerian bank account. Anyone who thinks the adversarial relationship between Washington and Tehran has turned into “détente” due to the nuclear deal is living in Never-Never Land. Our close ally, Saudi Arabia, has all but declared war on the Iranians and that means we are being dragged into the rapidly escalating conflict. In this context, two US military boats coming a mile and a half away from a major Iranian base in the Gulf isn’t an accident. This ‘training mission” was a military incursion, and although we have no way of knowing what mission the US hoped to accomplish, suffice to say that it wasn’t meant to be a kumbaya moment. Rachel Maddow is also raising questions about this: after a load of nonsense about how showing the sailors on Iranian media violated the Geneva Conventions – they didn’t: we aren’t at war with Iran yet – she pointed out the suspicious nature of the Pentagon’s shifting story during her January 13 broadcast. (I’d link to it but the Maddow Show’s stupid web site doesn’t allow for that.) To add another layer to the mystery, the Iranian government released the sailors after holding them for less than twenty-four hours – which isn’t the sort of behavior one might expect if those sailors were on a spy mission. And the Iranians issued an Emily Litella-ish statement, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: “’After explanations the U.S. gave and the assurances they made, we determined that [the] violation of Iranian territorial waters was not deliberate, so we guided the boats out of Iranian waters,’ said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.” So if those two boats were “snooping,” as the Fars News Agency originally claimed, why would Tehran come out with this all-is-forgiven statement? None of it makes any sense, at least not until one realizes that the Iranian government is hardly a monolith: power is divided up between various agencies and factions, with only the loosest sort of unity being enforced by the Supreme Leader. Farsi Island is controlled by the hard-line Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the hard-line faction of the ruling elite, which wields enormous political and economic power within the multi-polar Iranian state apparatus. It was the hard-liners who released the video and photos of the American sailors with their hands in the air, and their spokesmen demanded an apology from the US. It was the diplomats, however – the moderates, who negotiated the Iran deal – whose contacts with the US facilitated the sailors’ quick release. But it isn’t just the Iranians who are riven with factions and conflicting lines of authority: the American empire is overseen by a vast national security bureaucracy involving both military and civilians, and it isn’t monolithic, either. Although, in theory, civilians are in the drivers’ seat and the military just follows orders, in reality the Pentagon is an independent power that can obstruct or even effectively veto whatever diplomatic or military plans the White House has in mind. And while opposition to the nuke deal was centered in Congress, the Pentagon insisted at the last moment that sanctions on conventional arms and particularly those related to ballistic missiles remain in place. Iran’s recent testing of medium range ballistic missiles must have the generals in an uproar, and it could well be that this “training mission” in the Gulf was related – as either a spying mission, or an outright provocation designed to imperil relations. Or perhaps both. We’ll probably never know for sure: but what we certainly can know is that the official explanation for this latest incident stinks to high heaven. There’s no denying we were caught by the Iranians with our pants down. The only question is – how were we trying to f—k them over? I warned after the signing of the Iran deal that we are in for a long series of provocations in the Gulf, and this is only the beginning. In order to keep all this in perspective, just remember that the long dance between Washington and Tehran involves at least four partners, including their hard-liners and ours. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: 719Ada, paraclete, redleghunter (#0)
I still call it for lack of better name a 'fog of war'. What we do know is that in the last few weeks there have been a series of provocations since the nuke agreement, leading up to the emperor's SOTU and the release of Iranian assets .They have taken more American hostages and we did nothing about it . They had an unannounced missile test ,and we did not respond .They shot missiles near the Harry Truman and we did not respond . They burned the Saudi Embassy and we appeared to take Tehran's sider ;and now they captured riverine boats of our fleet under very questionable circumstances ,and again we rolled over . For all this we have JFKerry thanking the 12ers in the IRGC. They in turn said this is a lesson to the trouble makers in the US Congress. The broader message to the region is that an alliance with the feckless US is not worth much. What we do know is that they will continue to push the emperor to see how much they can get away with . So we can expect more of the same this year. the Pentagon insisted at the last moment that sanctions on conventional arms and particularly those related to ballistic missiles remain in place. Iran’s recent testing of medium range ballistic missiles must have the generals in an uproar, and it could well be that this “training mission” in the Gulf was related – as either a spying mission, or an outright provocation designed to imperil relations. Or perhaps both. Let me put on my tin foil hat for a moment . There is another possibility . Someone delivered a perfectly good drone to the Iranians in December 2011. They claim it was brought down by cyber warfare . The drone 'crashed 'largely intact, except for possible minor damage on its left wing.DOD said we lost control of the drone. But the Iranians insist that they jammed both satellite and land-originated control signals to the drone. Get where I am going with this ? Were the boats and crew delivered to the IRGC? It is no secret that the emperor wants a Persian hegemon in the region when we finally retreat . I personally believe he will try to have a formal transfer with a Presidential trip to Tehran before he leaves office. So do I think it's possible that these boats were delivered into the IRGC hands ? You betcha. They are quite an upgrade to the speed boats they swarm with today . Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Thanks Gatlin.
For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)
Drones drift into Iranian airspace, land and Iran has a stealth drone to duplicate. Now we have a Naval vessel drifting into Iranian territory and what do you know, Iran has an advanced coastal patrol ship to copy. We have spent billions and billions helping create a pretty large Iranian Empire. You'd think at some point they'd say thank-you.
They will say thank you with a missile up your arse, they are muslims afterall. I did see where you were going but you didn't wind up where I expected. If the Iranians have sophisticated electronic equipment that could send a drone off course they could just as easily send boats off course or interfere with the electrics on an engine so keep your tin foil hat on
yes it's one possibility that the 12ers had the technology to do it on their own. But that isn't the only possibility here .
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
It was a military excursion and we got caught.
I have to agree with you, but to what end?
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