Video and Audio of Strait of Hormuz Incident

The Pentagon has released video of this weekend’s Strait of Hormuz incident between the US Navy and Iranian Coast Guard. NBC Nightly News has a summary of the video showing the proximity of the speed boats to US warships and, more importantly, audio recordings of the threatening language used by the Iranians over the radio.

I applaud the US Navy for not blowing these nuts out of the water, which in many respects, would have been the prudent thing to do. They were threatening and provocative and definitely worthy of getting served. Although they were deserving of it, not killing them saves us a lot of grief.

Iran put these men in this situation hoping they would come into conflict with the US Navy and if the government was lucky, even killed. Then they can say that the US violated their territorial waters and their men were protecting them. Regardless of how the US responds, that’s the message that sticks in the Middle East, where it counts.

I’m extremely impressed that US Navy thought to record this incident for public consumption. Hopefully the Iranians will see that these recordings don’t lie–making these recordings a deterrent from such future operations.

This should sufficiently put to rest any of the fanciful notions that the Bush administration, or military for that matter, want armed conflict with Iran and were trying to create a Gulf of Tonkin for the 21st Century, as it were.