Huffington Posts Disgraces Itself With Pro-Iranian, Anti-U.S. Navy Hit Piece from Unqualified Source

The Huffington Post has once again reached into the bottom of the barrel to dredge up and publish a pro-Iranian, anti-American hit piece by a music producer, Hooman Majd, who offers his "expert" opinion that Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats were not acting in a hostile manner toward U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend.

It's all about short-term political partisan advantage, of course.  The mindset of the Huffington Post and the far left in general:  The current American president is a Republican, ergo, every enemy of the president is a friend of mine, and the long-term consequences of siding with America's enemies be damned.  Never mind that Iran represses, hangs, and imprisons its people and routinely chants "Death to America" in public rallies (and in its own parliament on the day it voted to resume uranium enrichment).

Publishing the military opinions of a record producer as if they were expert military opinion is doubly foolish.  The Huffington Post would have been better off to remain silent if it could not offer a qualified expert.

For the Huffington Post to go so far out on a limb to take sides in favor of a nation that has sworn to destroy America may not be treason, but it's still the kind of stain that doesn't wash out. 

From the Weekly Standard:

The teaser for the piece reads, "At the risk of sounding like an apologist for the Islamic Republic..." The author is Hooman Majd, who accuses the Pentagon of manufacturing the incident with Iran in the Gulf this week.

The Pentagon's version of the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning, involving U.S. Navy warships and Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats is, at the very least highly suspicious. On Tuesday, the Navy released video footage and an audiotape to back its claims that the Iranian boats acted in a threatening and provocative manner, but neither the video nor the audio are particularly convincing as proof that Iran had hostile intentions. The video, which shows what is claimed are Iranian boats speeding around U.S. ships, doesn't show any of the boats hurtling directly towards any of the navy ships, nor does it show what the Pentagon claimed the Iranians then did, namely dropped "white boxes" in the water.

It goes on like that--analysis of the accents, Iranian naval tactics, etc. And what are Mr. Majd's qualifications for such an analysis?

Hooman Majd has had a long career as an executive in the music and film businesses. He was Executive VP of Island Records, where he worked with a diverse group of artists including U2, The Cranberries, Tricky and Melissa Etheridge; and Head of Film and Music at Palm Pictures, where he executive-produced James Toback’s “Black and White” and Khyentse Norbu’s “The Cup” (Cannes 1999).

Watch the tape for yourself--no one but an apologist for the Iranian regime could possibly claim that the boats shown were not acting in a threatening and reckless manner. And Majd has absolutely no evidence on which to base his accusation that the Pentagon manufactured or concocted any of this.

It'd be one thing if Arianna got some expert in Naval tactics to write a piece saying that, from the video available, it isn't clear that the Iranian were acting in the aggressive manner the Pentagon alleged--though I doubt she could find a reputable expert to say any such thing. But to have some record producer accuse the military of a conspiracy based on...what exactly? The Huffington Post would have been better off just posting the Iranian regime's propaganda. It draws the same conclusion, yet much more elegantly.

Environmental Republican, who has had prior experience with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, weighs in:

Let me tell you all a story about my experience with the Iranian military. In 1992, my ship was traversing the Straits of Hormuz on the way to Oman. Iranian gunboats encircled the ship and got dangerously close--this was pre-USS Cole days mind you. I was stationed on a starboard-side .50 cal gun mount and was tracking the boats awaiting the word to open fire. It's not hard to hit a small boat with a rapid fire weapon, you just walk it in. But alas, we didn't wish to cause an international incident and were told to safe the weapons. I was ready to take them out as soon as ordered to do so and I wished they had done so as a warning to steer clear of US warships in international waters.

Flash forward to present, the Straits are a thin strip of water and the Iranian's are always in the area when we travel through them. They have made hostile gestures to us for years and--keeping in mind the USS Cole attack--the captain was indeed cautious, if not entirely foolish to not at least fire a warning shot but he was there and I was not.

[Quoting Majd:] Iranian patrol boats do indeed, as Iran freely admits, check on ships that enter the Persian Gulf, in this case only three miles outside its territorial waters, much as one would expect them to do (and as the U.S. Coast Guard would undoubtedly do if a foreign fleet of warships cruised within fifteen miles of say, Miami Beach), but apart from the arrest of the British sailors last year, there is hardly ever even a sharp exchange of words. At the risk of sounding like (and as I'm sure I will be accused of being) an apologist for the Islamic Republic, the encounter with the U.S. Navy as described by the Pentagon just doesn't ring true. Coming as it did on the eve of President Bush's visit to the Middle East, the encounter as described is doubly suspicious.

Ding ding! We have a winner. You don't sound like an apologist for the Islamic Republic, you sir are an apologist for that vile regime (you know, the country that "has no gay people"). He freely admits that Iran has a right to harass US shipping in international waters. To most people, that's an act of aggression. To Mr. Majd, it's Iran's right to do so in the a strait that is devilishly thin.

I'm sorry if I don't acknowledge the expertise of a record producer over that of a US Navy Commander so at the risk of sounding like an apologist for the Navy and being that he sounds exactly like an apologist, Mr. Majd's hypothesis sounds doubly suspicious. The fact that Iran--your birth country and the nation you now defend--was complicit in taking 52 Americans hostage and holding them for 444-day, was responsible for the death of hundreds of Marines in Beirut and now arms both Syria and Hezbollah makes me triply suspicious, sir.

An eminently qualified source, defense analyst Stuart Koehl, says the U.S. Navy did the right thing by maintaining a defensive posture and capturing the incident on tape, but that there is a real risk that the Iranians are preparing for a suicide attack at sea:

The type of boats used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are quite similar to the "cigarette boats" favored by drug smugglers off Florida and the Gulf Coast. Essentially big engines and massive fuel tanks wedded to the smallest possible hull, they are capable of speeds in excess of 40 knots, but are wildly unstable in anything other than calm seas, and therefore make lousy weapons platforms--if your weapon of choice is something like a gun, rocket, or shoulder-fired missile. On the other hand, you can fill one of those boats up with about a quarter ton of high explosives (more if you ditch some of the fuel), in which case you have a very nice manned torpedo (the Japanese were gearing up for that at the end of World War II). Because of their speed and maneuverability, it doesn't take too long for those boats to close inside the engagement zone of a major warship (e.g., the Ticonderoga class cruiser in the video), so if you let them get too close, there is a good possibility they could ram you, if that is their intent.

If you look at the video, you can see them crossing and recrossing the wakes of our ships, then pulling up alongside at a distance of a hundred meters or so, then breaking away and repeating the process. To me, it looked as if they were practicing for just such a suicide attack--checking out the angles, the times and the distances involved, looking over the ships to determine the arcs of fire for the close-in weapon systems.

Now, since the Cole incident, the U.S. Navy has invested a lot in close-in defense against small surface craft. They added pintle-mounted machine-guns along the rails, added electro-optical sensors to provide better target acquisition capability, and most of all, they modified the Mk.15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) to engage surface as well as missile targets. So there is a good chance that, given adequate warning, our ships could destroy those boats before they could strike home. On the other hand, how long does it take a boat going 40 knots to close 100 meters? About two seconds. So, if the boats approach from the right angle, they may get inside our defenses before we have a chance to shoot. Or, assuming that we do hit the boat, it is moving so quickly and is so close that it could "go ballistic" even if severely damaged; i.e., it would continue on to hit the ship anyway.

If these provocations continue in the future, the U.S. will have to take some action, simply because treating them as "business as usual" creates an atmosphere of complacency. The first 99 times the Iranians do this, nothing happens--then on the 100th incident, they press the attack. This is a very old ruse of war--set up a routine to lull the enemy into a false sense of security, then strike. Worked for the Israelis in 1967, for the Egyptians in 1973--for that matter, it worked for Joshua more than 3500 years ago. The way to avoid the problem and minimize the danger is to swat the fly away--to show the enemy that you won't be diddled with impunity. You don't actually have to shoot at anyone, not when you're driving a 9100-ton cruiser and they have 30 ton speedboats--all you have to do is pass a little too closely while cranking 30 knots, and let your bow wave and wake do the rest. If you're feeling charitable, you can lower a boat and pick up survivors.

Comments

[benning]

The next "playtime" by the Iranians ought to end with their cute little boats sinking in flames to the bottom of the Straits.

Moonbats' screams of outrage notwithstanding.