Legal mist stokes US-Iran tensions in strait
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times
The recent, and escalating, tension between Iran and the US in the narrow corridor of the Strait of Hormuz has once again drawn attention to the strait's international maritime status, and to the ramifications of this tension as a flashpoint in the Middle East.
In a significant raising of the temperature, US President George W Bush on Sunday accused Iran of threatening security around the world by backing militants and urged his Gulf Arab allies to confront "this danger before it is too late".
Speaking in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates during his seven-nation tour of the Middle East, Bush said the US is strengthening its "security commitments with our friends in the Gulf" and "rallying friends around the world to confront this danger". He also called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror".
Tension spiked markedly last week when Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) speedboats were involved in an "incident" with three US Navy vessels, which claimed they were international waters.
Yet there is no "international water" in the Strait of Hormuz, straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. The US government claimed, through a Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan Whitman, that the three US ships "transiting through the Strait of Hormuz" were provocatively harassed by the speedboats. This was followed by the Pentagon's release of a videotape of the encounter, where in response to Iran's request for ship identification, we hear a dispatch from one of the US ships stating the ship's number and adding that "we are in international waters and we intend no harm".
(Continued here.)
Asia Times
The recent, and escalating, tension between Iran and the US in the narrow corridor of the Strait of Hormuz has once again drawn attention to the strait's international maritime status, and to the ramifications of this tension as a flashpoint in the Middle East.
In a significant raising of the temperature, US President George W Bush on Sunday accused Iran of threatening security around the world by backing militants and urged his Gulf Arab allies to confront "this danger before it is too late".
Speaking in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates during his seven-nation tour of the Middle East, Bush said the US is strengthening its "security commitments with our friends in the Gulf" and "rallying friends around the world to confront this danger". He also called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror".
Tension spiked markedly last week when Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) speedboats were involved in an "incident" with three US Navy vessels, which claimed they were international waters.
Yet there is no "international water" in the Strait of Hormuz, straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. The US government claimed, through a Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan Whitman, that the three US ships "transiting through the Strait of Hormuz" were provocatively harassed by the speedboats. This was followed by the Pentagon's release of a videotape of the encounter, where in response to Iran's request for ship identification, we hear a dispatch from one of the US ships stating the ship's number and adding that "we are in international waters and we intend no harm".
(Continued here.)
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