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The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 40 percent of the world’s oil supply passes, was once again the scene of a dramatic standoff between Iran and the West, according to a curious story that hit the media on Monday.
The morning began with a CNN report citing an unnamed Pentagon official who said five Iranian vessels had come with within 700 feet of three U.S. Navy ships transiting the strait and forced them to take evasive action around 8 a.m. local time on Sunday. The Iranian speedboats allegedly dropped two unmarked white boxes (conceivably intended to appear as mines) into the water, radioed a threatening message to the U.S. vessels and, according to the unnamed official, turned away “literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire.” The incident reportedly came to end about 20 minutes later without a single shot fired.
The U.S. Navy 5th Fleet in Bahrain later issued a press release that said five small speedboats — suspected of being manned by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) — confronted the U.S. warships and engaged in aggressive behavior, but the report did not comment on the purported radio threat or the white boxes.
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