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U.S. ship warns Iranian boats in Persian Gulf

A Navy patrol ship in the Persian Gulf fired a flare to warn off three approaching high-speed boats late Thursday, the Navy said, and although a Navy spokesman said the boats were unidentified, U.S. news agencies reported they were Iranian.

The coastal patrol ship Typhoon was in the central Persian Gulf on its way north when it encountered the three boats, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain. The Typhoon’s crew made what Christensen called “standard queries” over the bridge-to-bridge marine radio, warned the ships to stay away, and then fired the flare. As the Typhoon continued its transit, the three boats fell behind out of sight, he said.

Christensen said there would be no investigation because “there was nothing to investigate. Nothing happened.”

Navy officials in Washington, who identified the boats as Iranian, told reporters they were not apparently armed and came within about 200 yards of the Typhoon before its crew fired the warning flare.

Iran’s official PressTV news network reported on its Web site that an Iranian official denied there was a confrontation between the boats and the Typhoon. PressTV quoted the official as saying that the boats had approached the U.S. ship for “a routine check.”

The incident recalled an encounter in January between three U.S. warships and several Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz, when the U.S. crews warned the Iranian boats over the radio and blasted their horns to get them to keep away. Compounding the confusion was a threatening radio transmission heard aboard one of the U.S. ships that may have come from one of the Iranian boats, or may have been a local radio prankster nicknamed “the Filipino Monkey.”

Other U.S. ships have encountered small Iranian boats coming close aboard; according to Navy commanders, in December the dock landing ship Whidbey Island fired warning shots at an Iranian boat that got too close.

Typhoon has been based in Bahrain since 2004.

DISCUSS: Another encounter