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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

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Crude oil prices too low: Iran  
 
Oct 20 04:09 PM US/Eastern
       
 
 


View larger image

  Iran, OPEC's number-two exporter, hit out Saturday at the recent hike in oil prices, saying real prices were far lower than the 90-dollar-a-barrel level of last week.
"Oil is still cheap," acting Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said in an interview with the Iran newspaper.

"The sweet taste of oil is not tangible because it is very far from the range that is expected by us (Iran and OPEC)," Nozari said.

Nozari argued that calculations based on current inflation rates and depreciation of the dollar's value as well as high costs of oil and gas projects puts oil's true price at less than 50 dollars a barrel.

"Today's prices even at the level of 90 dollars a barrel (in the market) are not effective because the real price of oil is currently about 47 dollars per barrel (as profit)," he said.
 http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=07...&show_article=1
 

US Navy Says It Fired Warning Shots

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT  
5 hours ago
CAIRO, Egypt (AP)  

The U.S. Navy said Friday that one of its ships fired warning shots at a small Iranian boat in the Strait of Hormuz in December during one of two serious encounters that month.
The USS Whidbey Island fired the warning shots on Dec. 19 in response to a small Iranian boat that was rapidly approaching it, said a U.S. Navy official.
"One small (Iranian) craft was coming toward it, and it stopped after the Whidbey Island fired warning shots," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
It was the first official confirmation that the United States had fired warning shots in any recent confrontation with Iran in the Gulf.

 

‘Reckless’ Iranians Threaten To Blow Up American Warships In The Gulf

January 8, 2008
Michael Evans, Defence Editor, and Michael Theodoulou

The radio message received by three American warships as they entered the narrow Strait of Hormuz sent the crews to action stations for an imminent attack.

Five Iranian speedboats had been detected on the radar, approaching fast in the dim light of the early Gulf morning. As they sped towards the group they slipped suspicious boxes into the water.

However, it was the warning transmitted as they closed in that threatened to turn a potentially hostile manoeuvre into a dangerous incident that could have spiralled out of control. “I am coming at you, you will explode in a couple of minutes,” the message said.

The three warships from the US 5th Fleet – USS Hopper, a 8,300-tonne guided missile destroyer, USS Port Royal, a 9,600-tonne Ticonderoga-class cruiser, and USS Ingraham, a 4,100-tonne frigate – prepared to blast the speedboats out of the water, using a combination of the deadly close-range Phalanx Gatling and other rapid-fire guns.

The aggressive approach of the five boats fitted the profile of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Not only did they ignore the warnings from the American ships but the white boxes, which they were dropping over the side of their speedboats, forced the Americans to take emergency evasive action.

complete article

 

I'll go out on a limb here...
I would not start a war over it, but if boats were approaching fast to my warship, and they threatened me, and they dropped something overboard that could endanger my ship, I would have blown them out of the water.
But then I would do that to anyone who approached my warship in that manner, not just the Iranians.

I also would not allow my sailors to be caught and taken prisoner like the British sailors were.

Just a thought for the day.


 

IF the situation fits the SOP required that small fast boats are encroaching upon a warship then it's the responsibility of the Officer of The Deck to carry out the ships response per that SOP.

Chances are from the sound of the tape that was shot on the bridge of the US ship I'm surprise these guys weren't in a better state of readiness. It's a damn good thing it wasn't the command staff that was aboard my ship for the simple reason CIWS would've been working in short order, those boats (even though the OOD was trying to be careful) would've been in millions of schards.

Those magic words "Don't Tread on Me" have been in the US Navy for over 232+ years for a good reason.

Pentagon Releases Video of Iran Clash

Jan 12 08:27 AM US/Eastern
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP)

Recent clashes between Iranian and U.S. Navy forces in the Persian Gulf reflect Iran's shifted military strategy to use its Revolutionary Guard's fast boats more aggressively in the region, the top U.S. military officer said Friday.
In a confrontation Sunday—captured on a 36-minute video the Pentagon made public Friday—military officials said boxes were thrown into the water by the Iranians, triggering concerns about potential mine threats. And in an incident last month, a U.S. ship fired warning shots at a rapidly approaching Iranian boat.

While there are lingering questions about the origin of menacing verbal threats heard during the confrontation Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that the clash was the most "provocative and dramatic" he has seen.

"The incident ought to remind us all just how real is the threat posed by Iran and just how ready we are to meet that threat if it comes to it," Mullen said.

Iran denied its boats threatened the U.S. vessels and accused Washington of fabricating its video. A five-minute video released by Iran shows a man speaking into a handheld radio, with three U.S. ships floating in the distance. That footage did not show any Iranian boats approaching the U.S. vessels nor any provocation.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the top U.S. military commander in the Mideast, told The Associated Press that Iran runs the risk of triggering an unintended conflict if its boats continue to harass U.S. warships in the strategic waterway.

Both Mullen and Fallon said they could not tell if the verbal threats heard in a Pentagon-released audio tape came from the Iranian boats. In the recording, a man with an accent can be heard warning in English: "I am coming to you" and then, "You will explode after ... minutes."

The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest with Iran over Sunday's incident, underscoring the increasing tension between the two countries.

Also Friday, the Navy for the first time described the December encounters in detail.

The USS Whidbey Island fired the warning shots on Dec. 19 in response to a small Iranian boat that was rapidly approaching, said a Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Three days later, the USS Carr encountered three small Iranian craft, two of which were armed, said the official. The USS Carr did not fire warning shots but sent warning blasts on the ships whistle, which caused the boats to turn around.

Sunday's incident, in which five Iranian fast boats swarmed a convoy of three U.S. warships, caused the most concern in the Pentagon and also heightened interest in the grainy video shot by a crew member on the destroyer USS Hopper.

The video, which Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said was unedited, showed U.S. sailors answering radio calls from the Iranians and monitoring the five fast boats. For much of the time, the camera followed one or more of the fast boats moving around the U.S. ships. And at one point, it zoomed in on an object floating in the water—which Navy officials said was one of the boxes the Iranians were seen throwing overboard.

As the incident escalated, sailors on the Hopper can be heard growing more agitated about how fast and close the small boats were moving near the ships. They can also be heard referring to the fact that the U.S. ship had gone on high alert, in which all of the hatches and doors on the main deck and below were closed to prepare the ship for potential damage.

complete article

"Hostile" Iran Sparks U.S. Attack Plan
WASHINGTON, April 29, 2008

(CBS) A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

"What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

U.S. officials are also concerned by Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf as well as Iran's still growing nuclear program. New pictures of Iran's uranium enrichment plant show the country's defense minister in the background, as if deliberately mocking a recent finding by U.S. intelligence that Iran had ceased work on a nuclear weapon.

No attacks are imminent and the last thing the Pentagon wants is another war, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen has warned Iran not to assume the U.S. military can't strike.

"I have reserve capability, in particular our Navy and our Air Force so it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," Mullen said.

Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq. Later this week Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expected to confront the Iranians with evidence of their meddling and demand a halt.

If that doesn't produce results, the State Department has begun drafting an ultimatum that would tell the Iranians to knock it off - or else.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/29/...in4056941.shtml