WHEN IRAN SENDS SPEEDBOATS TO CONFRONT U.S. NAVAL WARSHIPS, WHO IS AT FAULT?

There is an opinion piece in today's The New York Times written by a former marine officer, David Crist, on the danger of those small Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz. Crist writes that he himself witnessed the Iranian boats threaten his unit several years ago when operating in "Iraqi waters."

"I witnessed a very similar event five years ago during the invasion of Iraq. It was April 4, 2003, and in support of the British assault on the city of Basra in southern Iraq, four Navy patrol boats, under a Navy command in which I served, were dispatched up the Shatt al Arab, the waterway marking the Iran-Iraq border. The senior officer present — a Navy captain — was an experienced Seal who was fluent in Persian, having lived in Tehran as a teenager. We took great pains to avoid a confrontation, staying well within Iraqi territorial waters and even erecting a makeshift Iranian flag on one of the boats, which our captain felt would display our peaceful intentions.

"The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by sending four small boats toward us at high speed, the largest being a fast Swedish-built Boghammer, which resembles a cigarette boat, outfitted with a twin-barrel machine gun on its bow. With rooster-tails of white water, the boats came barreling over to the Iraqi side of the Shatt al Arab, surrounded us, and took the tarp off of at least one multiple-rocket launcher and pointed it directly at our lead boat."

This sounds like the Iranians are the provocateurs, but let's put Crist's experiences into context. The Shaat al Arab is a river between Iran and Iraq. Here is a MSN Encarta map that shows the Shaat. Furthermore, here is a MSN Encarta map of the Strait of Hormuz. Note in both cases the proximity to the coastline of Iran. The Shaat is only a river with one bank being Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is apparently at its widest only about 100 kilometers. The United States sends battleships including carriers through the Strait. If they sailed in the middle of the Strait, they would approach the coastline of Iran and be some 50 kilometers or less off the coast.

Imagine having Chinese warships or any other foreign warships operating within 50 miles of the coastline of the United States! What would be the response of the U.S. Navy? The Iranians sent out a few speedboats in response. The U.S. would probably mount a wholesale operation with warplanes and war ships, probably including nuclear subs!

My question then for Crist is whether he would support a U.S. naval response to foreign warships sailing that close to the coastline of the U.S.? Would he call such American response a "systematic harassment" in the same way as he characterizes the response of the Iranians to the threatening presence of American ships?

Is the Iranian response that unexpected by Crist that he calls for a military response against Iran, even if not encompassing all-out warfare? I argue that the Iranian reaction is even more understandable in light of the constant haranguing by George W. Bush on the evils of Iran and the threat that it poses. If Crist were a naval Iranian officer, how would he understand the presence of so much American firepower such a short distance off the Iranian coastline? Especially if that foreign government had threatened the U.S. with "nothing's off the table" rhetoric over the last eight years!

That's the trouble with Crist and his military analysis. It starts from a premise that the United States is in a superior moral position and that all response from the other is provocative and irrational. There is no understanding of what the other side thinks or reasons.