Strait of Hormuz Confrontation: Jan. 6, 2008

Summary: At about 5 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2008, five unmarked, armed, Iranian speedboats later identified as being from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard maneuvered close to three U.S. Navy ships entering the Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy ships heard a voice over an open radio channel warning: "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes." The Iranian boats dropped boxlike objects in the path of the ships. The Pentagon said one U.S. ship came within seconds of firing on the boats. The Pentagon said later it did not know for certain whether the threat heard over the radio came from the speedboats, from the shore, or from another ship. Iran denied there had been a confrontation, and said the gunboats were conducting a routine patrol. The incident was the third of its kind since December 2007, the Pentagon said.

Date: Jan. 6, 2008, about 5 a.m.

Place: Strait of Hormuz.

Incident: Five unmarked, armed Iranian speedboats operated by Iran's Revolutionary Guard maneuvered to within 200 yards of three U.S. Navy ships (the guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper, the cruiser Port Royal, and the frigate Ingraham) entering the Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy ships picked up a radio transmission, via an open channel maritime frequency, in which an accented voice said: "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes." The Iranian boats dropped what the U.S. Navy commander in the region described as "white box-like objects" into the water. The U.S. ships responded with evasive maneuvers, issued radio warnings to the Iranians to steer clear, and sounded ships' whistles. The New York Times quoted an unnamed Defense Department Source as saying that the commander of the USS Hopper came "very close to giving the order to fire. We were perilously close to an incident where we would have taken out at least one of the Iranian small boats." But before any shots were fired the Iranian boats veered away. The incident lasted less than 30 minutes.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman, on the day after the incident, said the threatening radio communication had caused the U.S. ships to take evasive action. A description of the incident reported by The New York Times said: "Whitman did not provide specifics on the radio communications or the American response, but it was clear the U.S. ships switched to a more aggressive posture upon receiving those communications from the Iranians" and were, quoting Whitman, "prepared to take appropriate action." Whitman said the Iranian boats were operating at speeds and distances that "showed reckless and dangerous intent-reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent." Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the senior Navy official in the region, said the Iranian action was "unnecessarily provocative." Defense Secretary Robert Gates also described the Iranian actions as provocative.

A videotape of the incident released by the Pentagon included a heavily accented voice warning that "you will explode after a few minutes."

Iranian response. Following the Pentagon's news briefing on the incident, Iran's foreign ministry described the incident as a routine patrol by Iranian speedboats. A foreign ministry spokesman, Muhammad Ali Hosseini, said: "That's something normal taking place every now and then for each party and it is settled after identification of the two parties." Iran issued its own four-minute videotape which appeared to show Iranian boats operating in a non-threatening manner. Iran claimed the Pentagon's videotape did not accurately reflect what happened during the incident. Tehran also released a recording of what it said was a radio exchange between its vessels and the Navy ships. In the Iranian version, the radio exchange was: "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat 16. Come in. Over. Request present course and speed." This was followed by an American-accented voice saying: "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters."

The radio transmission. Iran denied that its ships had issued the threat received on the open radio channel. On Jan. 10, 2008, two days after releasing a videotape containing the threat, the Pentagon said it could not confirm whether the voice had come from the Iranian speedboats, from shore, or from another ship in the area. The Pentagon also said the audio track had been added separately to the videotape. A Bloomberg News report quoted Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet, as saying "although we can't directly connect the radio transmission to the Iranian speedboats, we can connect it to the aggressive behavior we saw." Robertson was also quoted as saying the threats could have come from another ship or from someone on shore.

After the Jan. 6, 2008, incident, the Navy Times published a report suggesting that the threat ("I am coming at you") could have come from an anonymous source nicknamed the "Filipino Monkey." The Navy Times said: "In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of 'Filipino Monkey,' likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets." The voice is usually heard on channel 16 of maritime radios commonly used to hail ships in the area-similar to channel 19 on citizens band radios in the United States. The Navy Times report noted that the recorded threat had no background noise, as would be expected if the transmission came from an open speedboat.

Context

Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Pentagon said there had been at least two similar incidents in the Gulf involving armed speedboats operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard since December 2007, although neither event was judged to be as serious as the one on Jan. 6, 2008. In March 2007 the Iran Revolutionary Guard took 15 British Royal Navy sailors prisoner, having accused them of straying into Iranian waters in the same region. Britain denied the British vessel was in Iranian waters. Iran released the prisoners almost two weeks later. In a similar incident in June 2004 Iran captured six British marines and two sailors from three separate boats and accused them of straying into Iranian waters; all eight were released within a few days.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a radical armed wing of Iran's Islamist, fundamentalist revolution. One arm of the Revolutionary Guards, the Quds Force, has been accused of supporting anti-American Shiite insurgents inside Iraq. The Revolutionary Guard has also been accused of supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (See separate Background Information Summary in this database.)

U.S. Relations with Iran. Shortly after the Jan. 6, 2008, incident, President George Bush launched a week-long tour of the Middle East that included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Bush was promoting progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as a follow-up to the November 2007 Annapolis peace conference, and also trying to persuade Arab states that Iran posed a threat to peace in the region. For months beforehand, the United States conducted a diplomatic offensive aimed at persuading its major allies to impose sanctions against Iran to force Tehran to stop enriching uranium, which Washington said was part of a program to develop nuclear weapons. The United States has also accused Iran- and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in particular-of supplying arms and other aid to Iraqi insurgents fighting against the U.S. troops and the Baghdad government.

The Gulf. About 40% of the world's oil trade flow through the Strait of Hormuz according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, making this southern outlet from the Gulf one of the world's most strategic waterways. At its narrowest point the Strait of Hormuz is 34 miles wide; ships use two channels, each two-miles wide, to transit the strait. Iran in recent years has built a significant fleet of fast speedboats-estimated to number around 1,000 in early 2008-and interaction between the Iranian boats and the U.S. and British navies are frequent. Iran has also placed missiles on the island of Abu Musa near the shipping channels, and has threatened to block the Strait in case of future conflicts. During the Iran-Iraq war both sides attacked oil tankers during the so-called Tanker Wars of 1984-87. The United States Navy has long stationed a large number of ships in the Gulf, which is not only a vital waterway for petroleum tankers but also a channel to supply U.S. troops in Kuwait and Iraq, and a potential flashpoint between Iraq and Iran.

One of the most catastrophic incidents in the Gulf came in 1988 when the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airplane carrying 290 passengers in the belief that the aircraft was an Iranian jet fighter. Officials later blamed the incident on confusion in monitoring radio traffic.

Asymmetrical Naval Warfare. The threat to warships posed by small boats piloted by suicide bombers came into focus on Oct. 12, 2000, when such a boat exploded alongside the guided missile destroyer USS while it took on fuel in Aden. The explosion killed 17 sailors and blew a hole 40 ft. x 40 ft. feet in the side of the Cole. In 2002, not long after the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, the Navy conducted a war games exercise in the Gulf during which 16 ships were lost to suicidal attacks by small speedboats.

Other

Fathi, Nazila. "Iran Accuses U.S. of Faking Persian Gulf Video." The New York Times, Jan. 10, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html?scp=1&sq=iran+u.s.+navy+hormuz

"Iran speedboats 'threatened suicide attack on US' in Strait of Hormuz." Times Online (London) Jan. 7, 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle%5Feast/article3147217.ece

McLean, Demian. "U.S. unsure boats radioed threat." Bloomberg News (via Freep.com, Detroit Free-Press online). Jan. 11, 2008. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080111/NEWS07/801110347/1009

Pilkington, Ed. "Doubts Grow over Iranian Boat Threats." Guardian (London). Jan. 11, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2239119,00.html

Reynolds, Paul. "US-Iran stand-off not mere propaganda." BBC. Jan. 22, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle%5Feast/7182637.stm

"The Plot Thickens In The Strait Of Hormuz." National Journal.com/the Gate (online). Jan. 1, 2008. http://thegate.nationaljournal.com/2008/01/the%5Fplot%5Fthickens%5Fin%5Fthe%5Fstrai.php

"U.S. Warns Iran Against 'Provocative Actions' Following Incident in Strait of Hormuz." Fox News (online). Jan. 7, 2008. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,320587,00.html

Shanker, Thom and Brian Knowlton. "U.S. Describes Confrontation with Iranian Boats." The New York Times. Jan. 8, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/washington/08military.html?scp=1&sq=U.S.+Describes+Confrontation+With+Iranian+Boats+

Scutro, Andrew and David Brown. "'Filipino Monkey' behind threats?" Navy Times, Jan. 127, 2008. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/navy%5Fhormuz%5Firan%5Fradio%5F080111/

Wright, Robin and Ann Scott Tyson. "U.S. Expresses Alarm After Iranian Boats Threaten Three American Vessels." Washington Post. January 8, 2008; Page A15. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010701297.html