It was reported on the 8th January 2008 that US naval commanders were about to fire on a group of Iranian attack boats after being challenged at the ‘mouth of the Gulf’, the Pentagon disclosed, -  whereas the Iranians claim it was inside their territory.  They alleged that three US navy ships were targeted by ‘Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy’ as they entered the strait just after dawn.  It said that five Iranian patrol boats came within 200 yards of the US vessel’s, issued threats over the radio and dropped mysterious objects into the water.

A transcript of the radio traffic revealed that the Iranians had warned the US commanders that an attack was underway: “I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes”.   A ‘swarm attack’ by small Iranian boats in the busy shipping lane is one of the prime security threats to the US navy presence.  Its commanders were handing down an order to open fire when Iran navy patrol boats pulled back from international waters.  A Pentagon spokesman said the Iranians were ‘moments’ away from coming under fire.  A statement issued by the US Navy Fifth Fleet said that the incident occurred at about 8am local time as the cruiser Port Royal, the destroyer Hopper and the frigate Ingraham were on their way into the Gulf and passing through the Strait of Hormuz.  The White House demanded that Iran refrain from further provocation, but Teheran played down the incident as an ‘ordinary occurrence’.  ^[1] Then the shit hit the fan, when two days later the BBC reported the alleged threat to blow up US warships “may not have come” from Iranian speedboats involved in the stand-off, and that the voice on the Pentagon tape could instead have come from ‘another ship’ in the area or a transmitter on land, senior US Navy sources told the BBC, on the 10th January 2008.

     Iran accused the US of faking its video of the incident, and on Iranian state-run TV broadcast a separate video of the stand-off, in which there is no sign of threatening behaviour by the Iranian patrols, thought to belong to the Revolutionary Guards, though the four-minute clip doesn’t appear to show the whole incident.  The US military said video and audio that it released confirmed its allegation that Iranian speedboats harassed US warships and threatened to blow them up in a radio communication.

     However, The New York Times noted and reported on the 9th January 2008, that the US-released audio includes no ambient background noise of the kind that might be expected if the broadcast had come from on one of the speedboats.  Pentagon officials said the voice heard in the video clip is not directly traceable to the Iranian military, but could still have come from a high quality radio on one of the small boats, the paper reported ^[2].

     Fake Iranian Patrol Boats – Then in August 2008 Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker, spoke at the Campus Progress journalism conference and revealed that there was a meeting in Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office on how to start a ‘false flag’ war with Iran.  Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz in January that same year, was that; “If you get the right incident, the American public will support it”.  Hersh said: “There were a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war.  The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build, we in ‘our shipyard’, – build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats.  Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms.  And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives”.  ^[3] Hersh says it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans, I reckon it was more likely rejected as those talking to Hersh realised he was likely one day to talk about it. Hersh continues: “That’s the kind of – that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about.  So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected – uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.  But the point is jejune [boring], if you know what that means.  Silly? – Maybe, but potentially very lethal.  Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.” ^[3]

     Previous to this in 2007 the Iranian navy seized 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines, who were protecting Iraqi oil facilities at the head in the Gulf.  The British patrol was accused of trespassing in Iranian territory and surrendered without a shot, in part because air cover was withdrawn before the Iranians pounced.  And surely we should be thankful for that, as after all, it looks like a war would have started as from then.  The 15 crew of the frigate Cornwall were taken to Teheran where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presided over a humiliating ceremony announcing their release as an “Easter gift” to the British people ^[1]

   Extract from Trapped in a Masonic World – http://www.trappedinamasonicworld.co.uk

[1] “US tell’s Iran to back down after Gulf skirmish – Telegraph.” a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1574954/US-tells-Iran-to-back-down-after-Gulf-skirmish.html%3E">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1574954/US-tells-Iran-to-...;.

[2] “Rethinking Iran – Worldnews.com.” a href="http://article.wn.com/view/2008/01/18/Rethinking_Iran/%3E">http://article.wn.com/view/2008/01/18/Rethinking_Iran/>;.

[3] “U.S. Administration discussing ways to provoke a war with …” a href="http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/world/news/26659/%3E">http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/world/news/26659/>;.