1/8/2008: Commentary: Iranian Navy Harassment Not the First Time:

Retired Rear Adm. Guy Zeller of Coronado knows something about going
muzzle to muzzle with the Iranian navy.

Zeller led a battle group aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise in
the Persian Gulf during the late 1980s, when Iranian warships
routinely harassed U.S. Navy and merchant vessels and planted mines in
the strategic waterway.

Zeller commanded a battle group for Operation Praying Mantis after one
of those mines crippled the Navy frigate Samuel B. Roberts and wounded
10 sailors in 1988. The retaliatory mission, which sank two of Iran's
naval ships and three armed speedboats and destroyed two of its oil
platforms, remains the largest U.S. naval engagement since World War
II.

Through two more wars in the Middle East, including the current Iraq
war, the U.S. Navy has never lost its supremacy in the Persian Gulf.
Which is why it stunned Zeller to learn that five Iranian gunboats
reportedly charged three U.S Navy ships in the gulf Sunday.

Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard "maneuvered aggressively"
to within 500 yards of the cruiser Port Royal, the destroyer Hopper
and the frigate Ingraham, said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of
U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the gulf and is based in nearby Bahrain.

Pentagon officials said crews from two of the Iranian gunboats dropped
white, boxlike objects that floated and resembled mines.

"Mining in international waters is an act of war," Zeller said.
"Somebody would have to do something about it, and that somebody would
be the United States."

The warships passed by the boxes without harm. They didn't retrieve
them, so Pentagon officials don't know whether the boxes posed an
actual threat.

At another point during the confrontation, the warships received a
threatening radio call from the Iranians, "to the effect that they
were closing (on) our ships and that the . . . U.S. ships would
explode," Cosgriff said.

The U.S. commanders took a series of defensive steps, including making
radio calls to the Iranians that went unheeded. As they prepared to
fire warning shots, Cosgriff said, the Iranians fled toward their
shore. The entire standoff lasted about 30 minutes.

The incident increased friction between Washington and Tehran as
President Bush prepared to depart today for the Middle East.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have grown in recent years
over Washington's charge that Tehran has been secretly seeking to
develop nuclear weapons and supplying and training Iraqi insurgents
using roadside bombs, the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.

On Sunday, the three warships were heading into the gulf through the
Strait of Hormuz on what the Navy called a routine passage inside
international waters. The five gunboats approached them about 8 a.m.

Pentagon officials said the warships were about three miles outside
Iran's territorial waters, which extend 12 miles from its shores.

Navy ships routinely have contact with Iranian naval vessels without
confrontation, Cosgriff said. The three U.S. warships involved in
Sunday's incident had earlier exchanged normal communications with
Iranian shore stations and a passing Iranian naval ship, he added.

In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry suggested the Iranian boats had not
recognized the U.S. vessels. Spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini played
down the incident, saying it was "similar to past ones."

"That is something normal that takes place every now and then for each
party, and (the problem) is settled after identification of the two
parties," he told the state news agency IRNA.

During a tour of San Diego-area military facilities yesterday,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged Iran to avoid provocative
military acts.

"The risk of an incident or an incident escalating is real," Gates
said, describing the Tehran regime as very unpredictable. "I can't
imagine what was on their minds."

Gates said there had been two or three similar incidents - "maybe not
quite as dramatic" - over the past year in the gulf. He offered no
further details.

Sunday's incident brought back unsettling memories of the U.S.-Iranian
confrontation in the Persian Gulf during the 1980s. At the time, Iran
was at war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which the United States then
supported.

Six months after the frigate Samuel B. Roberts struck the mine in
January 1988, the U.S. cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian
airliner, killing 290 passengers. The Navy said it was an accident,
but Iran's leaders said the ship targeted the plane.

During that period, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard frequently
harassed ships under Rear Adm. Zeller's command.

"The Revolutionary Guards are known as being hotheads," Zeller said.

Some Navy officials viewed them as bullies.

"When you stand up to them, they tend to back off," said Tony Less, a
retired vice admiral who was the senior Navy commander in the Persian
Gulf region during Operation Praying Mantis.

The commanders of Navy ships have broad authority to defend themselves
in an attack, Zeller and Less said.

"You're going to protect your ship," Less said in a telephone
interview from his home in Clifton, Va.

Navy ship commanders must absorb lots of historical lessons. They
remember the nearly unarmed spy ship Pueblo, surrounded and seized 40
years ago in international waters off North Korea, its crew tortured
into making phony confessions during 11 months in captivity. They also
remember the destroyer Cole, attacked during a port call in Yemen by
al-Qaeda suicide bombers in a small boat. Seventeen sailors died in
the blast.

The Navy should give no quarter when it comes to protecting so crucial
a waterway as the Persian Gulf, said independent naval analyst Norman
Polmar of Alexandria, Va.

"My feeling is, just blast the hell out of them," Polmar said. "You
attack a (U.S. Navy) destroyer or a cruiser, you can expect to get
killed."

At the same time, military experts said acting aggressively could lead
to disaster.

"If you're too rambunctious with protecting your ship," Less said,
"you stand a chance of not only embarrassing yourself, your Navy and
your government, you also stand a chance of wreaking havoc."
Source: Harvested News via Security News Wire