Speedboat Diplomacy
Published January 11, 2008
In the 19th century era of 'Jingo Jim' Blaine and his proteges, the United States was sometimes accused of carrying out 'gunboat diplomacy', where our warships would sail into the ports of small nations and impose our will on them by the threat of the powerful guns. Usually the objective of this was to separate those nations from the influence of the European colonial powers, or encourage them to follow a particular political course, or to impose order to create an environment hospitable to American business interests. At a time when naval vessels were expensive and naval technology was advancing rapidly, American ships were often so powerful relative to the military resources of fledgling nations that they posed a threat which could not be challenged or ignored.
Now in a peculiar reversal of that bully tactic, Iran's very limited navy has once again taken threatening action towards the US fleet operating in the Persian Gulf. This isn't exactly an isolated incident. Armed Iranian speedboats regularly track and observe US shipping and military vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz in international waters. Usually they maintain a reasonable distance and make limited radio contact, but in the most recent incident they weren't satisfied with just observing and decided to 'buzz' the US vessels in a more threatening way. While a speedboat might normally not be considered threatening to a warship, in light of the USS Cole attack and other examples of land-based vehicular suicide bombing, the speedboats do represent at least some sort of potential threat. They could hold an awful lot of explosives and if a bunch of them rushed a US ship at the same time, some might get through and do a lot of damage.
Since the USS Cole attack US ships have been equipped with weaponry specifically designed to prevent attacks from smaller vessels, including surface to surface missiles and heavy anti-personnel guns. What's remarkable about this recent incident is that the US vessels involved showed such restraint and merely warned off the threatening Iranian boats rather than blowing them out of the water, which may well have been justified.
Although speedboats might be a theoretical threat to warships, realistically they aren't much of one, and these boats seem not to have carried explosives or any kind of armament which could do much damage. Their harassment of the US fleet seems to have been almost entirely a hollow, symbolic threat, though whether it was officially authorized or just an excess of nationalistic zeal on the part of Iranian sailors is unclear.
As the situation in Iran becomes more volatile because of external pressure, more extreme measures have become necessary for the mullahs to retain control over the country. They can only maintain power through oppression for a finite time and need to address the nation's problems, which may not be possible without foreign cooperation. To get that cooperation they need to deal with the United States. An incident like this serves them in two ways. It reminds their people of the outside threat posed by the US, from which only their government can presumably protect them, thereby increasing loyalty through fear. It also builds national confidence and makes the government look strong and fearless so that if they do negotiate with the Great Satan they can appear to do so from a position of strength.
Dave Nalle has been a magazine editor, freelance writer, capitol hill staffer, game designer and taught college history for many years. He is an activist for libertarianism within the Republican party. He now designs fonts for a living and lives with his family just outside Austin. You can find his writings on politics and culture at Republic of Dave, on conspiracy theories at IdiotWars and on design and fonts at The Scriptorium.
- Speedboat Diplomacy
- Published: January 11, 2008
- Type: News
- Section: Politics
- Filed Under: Politics: International, Politics: Policy, Politics: War and Terrorism
- Writer: Dave Nalle
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Comments on this articleComments
In the ME, the Navy's restraint will probably be regarded as a sign of weakness...
I wonder what kind of reaction there would have been here at home if they'd blown those boats out of the water. The fireworks would have been fun to watch.
Dave
Dave,
I can just picture the Iranians shouting at the warship going 60 mph and having an audible recording. By the way you might want to check out recent development in said story. The US military came out yesterday and now says that they do not know where those threatening comments came from.
To believe that it was audible considering the speed of the boat, and the obvious sound of the warship steaming, is absurd on its face.
Do you really feel threatened by a country that is half-way around the world with no way of really attacking us?? Perhaps you have a bit of guilt from OUR country through various acts of terrorism, overthrowing their leader back in the 50's and replacing it another tin-pot dictator to support your ideas of freedom sir.
My favorite thig about pablito is the way he doesn't actually read the posts he responds to.
I was thinking the same thing. Paul apparently didn't notice that (a) the article is posted as News, not Opinion, and (b) Dave has obviously been keeping up with the latest developments in the story and was very careful to leave out any notion that the Iranians had threatened to blow one of the ships up.
Paul reminds me a bit of JustOneMan - another one who doesn't read posts, only the names of the posters. Actually, that's probably being unfair to JOM. He reads them, but has already decided what's written in them, so has the same response already prepared (usually some mindless slogan). Actually, that's still probably being unfair to him. I have severe doubts as to whether JOM can actually read.
Sorry. Carry on.
Dread,
I stand corrected. thank you
Pablo
ps I did read the entire post before commenting however.
The Iranian-US incident has already unravelled.
Doubts grow over Iranian boat threats
· Pentagon climbdown over 'you will explode' video
· Mystery remains over where voice came from
Ed Pilkington New York
Friday January 11, 2008
Guardian
Doubts intensified last night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after 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.
The concession came on the day that a formal American complaint was lodged with Iran over the incident, and just 24 hours after President George Bush, on tour in the Middle East where he will be discussing policy towards Iran, warned Tehran to desist from such aggression and said any repetition would lead to "serious consequences".
The Pentagon alleges that the confrontation lasted about 20 minutes and took place in the Strait of Hormuz, where the US ships were in international waters. Five Iranian patrol boats swarmed around three US warships and came within a threatening 200 metres, prompting US personnel to be put on alert.
The US navy has said that its gunners came within seconds of firing on the speedboats.
On Tuesday, the US administration released video footage that it said showed the Iranian speedboats harassing the American vessels. A voice in English with a strong accent was heard to say: "I am coming at you - you will explode in a couple of minutes."
Yesterday the Iranians put out their own four-minute video that showed an Iranian patrol officer in a small boat communicating with one of the US ships. "Coalition warship number 73, this is an Iranian navy patrol boat," the Iranian said. An American naval officer replied: "This is coalition warship number 73 operating in international waters."
The voice of the Iranian sailor in Tehran's footage was different to the deeper and more menacing voice, threatening to blow up the warships in the US version. Nor was there any sign of aggressive behaviour by the Iranian patrol boats.
The Strait of Hormuz is a particularly sensitive stretch of water, both economically as a key shipping route for oil from the Gulf, and militarily. The location, together with memories of the arrest of 15 British sailors by the Iranians last year and their detention for two weeks, is likely to have heightened nerves on both sides.
But the mystery remains of where the voice that apparently threatened to bomb the US ships came from. The Pentagon has said that it recorded the film and the sound separately, and then stitched them together - a dubious piece of editing even before it became known that the source of the voice could not, with certainty, be linked to the Iranian patrol boats.
A post on the New York Times news blog yesterday from a former naval officer with experience of these waters said that the radio frequency used in the Strait of Hormuz was regularly polluted with interfering chatter, somewhat like CB radio. "My first thought was that the 'explode' comment might not have come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser monitoring the events at a shore facility."
Despite growing doubts about what happened, the Bush administration continued to stand by claims of Iranian hostility. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, said the concern came from the "fact that there were five of these boats and that they came as close as they did to our ships and behaved in a pretty aggressive manner".
Further attention will focus on Tehran from today when Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, begins a two-day visit for talks on Iran's nuclear programme.
Speedboat incident unravels
I'm not surprised they're now playing down this incident. The encounter sure doesn't sound very hostile to me - quite the opposite, in fact...
"I am coming at you - you will explode in a couple of minutes."
(Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!)
US propaganda under suspicion of war neurosis! Video of alleged iranian provocation at Strait of Hor
1 comment
US propaganda under suspicion of war neurosis! Video of alleged iranian provocation at Strait of Hormuz... uhhhh so provocative, the distance of the speed boat to the US destroyer is so far, you might not even see them... definitely not hear them saying "I am coming to you... You will explode in a few minutes"... smile
vid 1
And below the iranian point of view with video (Click on the camera icon to view the video): vid 2
Two videos
The verbal threat came over a radio, did it not? They weren't shouting from the deck of their speedboats.
I frankly don't know what to make of this incident. Dave has thrown out a few possibilities, any of which could be correct. We may never know. It's more important now to see how this and other events play out between Iran and the U.S. in the weeks and months to come.
If there is any national leader who I think is less able than GW, it is Ahmadinejad. I think he is a nutball. (I reserve that only for a few elite and of course all Raptarians.)
B
I was thinking the same thing. Paul apparently didn't notice that (a) the article is posted as News, not Opinion, and (b) Dave has obviously been keeping up with the latest developments in the story and was very careful to leave out any notion that the Iranians had threatened to blow one of the ships up.
Not only that, but I did briefly address and dismiss and largely irrelevant the disagreement over what was said and by who.
To clear up some other confusions here. I've watched all of the available video.
The Iranian boat which radioed the US ship was not moving, which is why the transmission was clear. A transmission from a moving boat would have been relatively useless.
Radio carries great distances and as someone pointed out, ships at sea pick up all sorts of odd transmissions.
There's no logical reason why the US Navy would have faked a threatening sound track on the video. If they had considered that threat as being associated with the gunboat they likely would have opened fire and they did not.
Regardless of what was said over the radio, the actions of the speedboats were threatening, at least to the degree that they could be. They approached closer than necessary as a group, clearly with the intent of making some sort of 'statement' by their actions. By all accounts this is hardly the first incident of this sort.
Dave
Brian, I already linked to the World Socialist website in the article itself. You're not saying anything they didn't already say.
Dave
I think the poms invented gunboat diplomacy Dave.
America's version, according to that wonderful virtual journal of record, Wikipedia, is "big-stick" diplomacy.
The Iranians are foolishly playing with fire, I fear, and not realising quite what they are dealing with.
Sooner or later, they'll get burnt. And everyone will say, "We told you so".
It's like poking a tiger with a stick. Everything's fine until it gets the sh.ts.
If the poms invented it, we perfected it, and well before the 'big stick' was thought up by TR. In the 1840s Cornelius Vanderbilt bombarded Managua from his own private warship when the Nicaraguan government wouldn't cooperate with his trans-isthmus railroad plan.
Dave
And yes, Brian, you can always believe everything you read in The Guardian. No agenda there.
Today's NY Times on the reasons behind the seemingly exaggerated reaction:
There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.
In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships -- an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels -- when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.
"The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack," said Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military. "The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes."
That is a little scary, eh?
Well, it's nice to see that someone other than me is covering the Missile East.
Sooner or later, the Iranians will use more than speedboats, threatening tapes and toothpicks to make their point. They'll use missiles. If they can, they'll use them against Europe (big mistake, that), and they will certainly use them against Israel. And when they do, they will get slapped down very very hard.
But in the meantime, they will continue to shuck and jive.
Iran's government will fall before they use missiles on Europe. Mark my words.
Lumpy,
The question is, if it does fall, who takes over? The mullahs? What comes next may be worse.
B-tone
The mullahs already hold power. As I see it the only alternative would be a nationalistic secular regime. I say bring back the Pahlavis.
Lumpy,
Just a guess, but I don't think the Iranis will give you a vote. The mullahs hold power, but they are not officially part of the government. If the government fell, the mullahs would likely be able to step in and hold things together.
B-tone
STM said:
"And yes, Brian, you can always believe everything you read in The Guardian. No agenda there.
And yes STM you can always believe everything you read in, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The New York Post, The LA Times, and um countless other propaganda spewed out by these and others on a daily basis. While your at it, you can also always believe what you see, on FOX News, CNN, NBC (liberal general electric rag, smirk), NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, and the rest of them. I love a free press, don't you STM? The fourth estate my buttocks. No agenda there!
@#24:
Ya want your leg back now or later, Pablito?
"Sometimes a crisis like this is not what it seems and may be a sort of convenient and cynical collusion between the two parties involved, leading towards a mutually beneficial outcome while avoiding an appearance of weakness for the weaker party."
Well hell if that's the truth of the matter in this case let's hope all future American Iranian interaction goes like this. Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned pissing contest. No one was hurt no one was killed and both sides came out content right Dave?
It would be great if this was all it ever came to but unfortunately there is good reason to believe that while may Iran may not exactly be nuking us any time soon, they are in fact providing all kinds of support to terrorists whose goal it is to kill Americans. The radical elements in Iran are fomenting violent radical islam and hatred for America at the same time.
This is the problem we have with other predominantly muslim nations. How do we protect our own lives and interests from the jihadists in these nations without going after the actual nation states full bore.
It's a puzzler.
Dave:
In today's Asia times:
How the Pentagon planted a false story
By Gareth Porter
(bad link removed)
Mainstream media Bubba, ohhhhhh thats not an American newspaper. Shucks.
Gulf or Tonkin, Operation Northwoods, Pearl Harbor, 9-11, man you will believe ANYTHING.
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You make a good point in saying that the Navy showed appropriate restraint. Given our current status in world politics, the crew's response takes on a whole new level of importance. Of course, how well that plays in the Middle East may be limited.