Wow, it looks like it was "white knuckle time" in the straits.

Quote Originally Posted by Times Online
Source: Link

The White House issued a stern warning to Tehran today after Iranian speedboats buzzed three US navy ships passing through the strategic Strait of Hormuz and reportedly threatened to blow them up.

A Pentagon official said that US forces were "literally" on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats and had moved to man their guns when the Iranians turned and sped away. No shots were fired in the incident yesterday morning in one of the world's key shipping routes for crude oil.

"We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future," said Gordon Johnson, spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, in a terse statement.

Details of the incident remain unclear, but the skipper of one of the five Iranians speedboats reportedly said in a radio transmission: "I’m coming at you and you will blow up in a couple of minutes."

"It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we’ve seen yet," a Pentagon official said.

But an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman dismissed it is a routine incident. "This is an ordinary occurrence which happens every now and then for both sides," he told the IRNA news agency.

News of the stand-off emerged as President Bush prepares to leave tomorrow on a trip to the Middle East in which he is expected to tackle Iran's growing regional influence.

The face-off was the most serious such incident since the Revolutionary Guard's seizure of eight Royal Navy sailors and seven Marines from the HMS Cornwall last March in the Shatt al-Arab waterway in the Gulf. Iran claimed that the 15 had strayed into Iranian waters, which Britain denied.

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