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Iranian attack boats provoked 3 Navy ships

Five Iranian high-speed attack craft accosted a trio of U.S. Navy warships Sunday in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, Defense Department officials confirmed, prompting evasive maneuvers by the U.S. ships and reportedly bringing them very close to opening fire.

No one was hurt and the Iranian boats withdrew before any shots were fired, but Pentagon and White House officials stressed Monday that the incident was needlessly provocative in the choke point through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes.

The cruiser Port Royal, the destroyer Hopper and the frigate Ingraham were in the strait on their way into the Persian Gulf around 2 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time Sunday when the Iranian encounter happened, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, who stressed he was citing “very preliminary reports” in his description.

The five boats, “some visibly armed,” swarmed the American ships, “showing reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent,” Whitman said. The warships’ commanders took evasive action and issued warnings to the Iranians and, according to press reports Monday, were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats when they retreated.

It was “a serious incident,” Whitman said.

The whole encounter lasted between 15 and 20 minutes, he said. He wouldn’t describe how the Iranian ships were armed or specifically how they maneuvered to threaten the U.S. ships, except to say they came close and clearly conveyed they were hostile. A Pentagon source said the Iranians radioed a message to the U.S. ships that “said something to the effect of, ‘we’re coming at you and you’ll explode in a couple minutes.’ ”

Analysts said Monday that the boats probably belonged to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the semi-autonomous paramilitary arm of the Iranian government that has been declared a “terrorist organization” by the United States and which U.S. officials have accused of supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents.

Whitman couldn’t confirm the Revolutionary Guards were behind the small boat encounter, but said it sounded consistent with their known tactics. The Revolutionary Guards captured 15 British sailors and marines in March of 2007 at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, and Iran exploited the troops for a propaganda coup before releasing them back to the U.K. two weeks later.

Whitman could not confirm earlier press reports that Iranian sailors dropped boxes in the sea ahead of the U.S. warships Sunday.

The Pentagon and the White House criticized the Iranian incident, although they seemed careful not to want to provoke another incident or increase tensions between the two militaries in the Persian Gulf. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell called the incident “perplexing,” and a White House statement said it was “provocative” and called for the Iranians to stop.

The encounter took place two days before President Bush’s planned trip to the Middle East, underscoring the issue of U.S.-Iranian relations that Bush hoped to address with leaders in Israel, Kuwait, Egypt and other Arab states.