Apr
25
Aw, hell, here we go:
A cargo ship hired by the U.S. military fired warning shots at boats suspected to be Iranian, the U.S. Navy said on Friday, underscoring tension in the Gulf as the Pentagon sharpened its warnings to Tehran.
Suspected to be Iranian? Okay…let’s see what happened.
According to American defense officials, the Westward Venture cargo ship chartered by the U.S. Defense Department was traveling in international waters when two unidentified small boats approached on Thursday.
After the boats failed to respond to radio queries and a warning flare, the cargo ship’s onboard security team fired “a few bursts” of machine gun and rifle warning shots, according to Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet.
It’s possible that the boats were Iranian, and were sent out to harass the US Navy. It’s also possible that the boats weren’t Iranian at all. We don’t know – but it was a possibility, so they were fired upon.
What I do know, as a parent, is what I tell my kid…if you poke at somebody with a stick for long enough, even if that somebody has been poking a stick at you, eventually things will get ugly. Like yet another war with Iran ugly.
Oh, and the news just drove the price of oil up another $3/barrel today, to a new record high of over $119/barrel. Very nice.
