Reading headlines in this day and age can be disturbing to any intelligent soul, but on occasion, the sheer stupidity of the headline causes one to pause. Today on Drudge, one headline states: “Iranian military boats veer dangerously close to US warship.” Of course, this came from Fox News, the mainstream leader in warmongering headlines.
One would have to think that this must have happened just off the U.S. coastline, maybe in New York harbor, right? Wrong, it happened just off the Iranian coastline, in the Strait of Hormuz, a strait that borders Iran. It is used as a travel route by oil tankers, but the U.S. sends it’s warships there against and in defiance of Iranian law. Iran requires that prior permission be granted before any warship enters the strait, but this is ignored by the U.S. military.
To put this in proper context, if Iran illegally patrolled directly off the east coast of the U.S. with its warships, patrolling from New York to Florida, and a U.S. vessel came close to that warship, Iran headlines would read, “U.S. military boats veer dangerously close to Iranian warship.”
The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. At its narrowest point, the strait is but 21 miles wide, but the width of the shipping lane in either direction is only two miles, separated by a two-mile buffer zone.
Twenty one miles wide means that a U.S. warship traveling exclusively in the shipping lane, and we all know they travel outside that boundary, would be less than ten miles off the Iranian coast.
Does that mean, as it should, that heavily armed Iranian warships should have the right to travel ten miles off the U.S. coast? Of course not. That would be ridiculous, just as it is ridiculous for the U.S. military to claim that right directly off Iran’s coast.
This is asinine, and beyond comprehension, but the ignorant and apathetic American citizen will automatically consider Iran aggressive, without even having a clue where the Strait of Hormuz is located. Even with that common knowledge, many Americans would still assume that the U.S. has the right to go anywhere and in any country on earth it wishes, simply because the U.S. is exceptional.
My title of “An exercise of extreme arrogance” is in this case, a gross understatement!
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