Crist writes how, like our US Navy ships, they too were confronted by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Patrol boats in menacing and confrontational ways....
From Iran Focus --
I witnessed a very similar event five years ago during the invasion of Iraq. It was April 4, 2003.... four Navy patrol boats, under a Navy command in which I served, were dispatched up the Shatt al Arab, the waterway marking the Iran-Iraq border. We took great pains to avoid a confrontation, staying well within Iraqi territorial waters.....
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by sending four small boats toward us at high speed.... With rooster-tails of white water, the boats came barreling over to the Iraqi side of the Shatt al Arab, surrounded us, and took the tarp off of at least one multiple-rocket launcher and pointed it directly at our lead boat.
Our captain tried to defuse the situation by telling the Iranians over the normal commercial radio channel that we were simply exercising our right to navigate Iraqi waters, had no intention of entering Iranian territory and did not seek a confrontation. The Iranians responded by a string of obscenities in heavily accented, broken English. After several tense minutes, we were ordered by our superiors to withdraw; the Iranian boats followed us a considerable distance before breaking off and heading back to their side of the waterway.
This was not the end of it, however. In the two weeks after this incident, American and coalition forces stationed on the Iraqi bank of the Shatt al Arab came under repeated, harassing small-arms fire from the Iranian mainland. More...
This story doesnt seem like it is going to have a happy ending for Iran.
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