Naval Incident in the Strait of Hormuz

Last Sunday’s naval encounter between Iranian and U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz has prompted commentators to revisit the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Both episodes were shrouded in confusion and ambiguity, but recently declassified official documents confirm that in the case of Tonkin, the U.S. political leadership moved quickly to impose an interpretive template that framed the episode as a casus belli justifying war against Vietnam. As National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados summarizes in a 2004 briefing paper:

This new evidence permits us to view more accurately the internal deliberations of the Johnson administration. Especially in combination with LBJ’s telephone conversations with McNamara, recently made available to the public with transcriptions, the material clearly shows Washington rushing to a judgment on events in the Tonkin Gulf, which it seized upon as evidence in support of its predetermined intention to escalate the conflict in Vietnam.

Defense analyst William Arkin sees a similar dynamic at work in the Bush administration’s reaction to the Strait of Hormuz incident. Arkin lauds the U.S. Navy for its measured and professional response to the provocation, but criticizes President Bush and Secretary Rice for seizing on the incident as an opportunity to ratchet up U.S. saber rattling. This “knee-jerk” move to heighten tensions comes at an especially unfortunate time, just when the recent post-NIE de-escalation of American rhetoric was beginning to have a positive effect in Iranian domestic politics:

Now that Iran is not under the threat of a military attack, all contradictions within the establishment are surfacing,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economic and political analyst. “The biggest mistake that Americans have constantly made toward Iran was adopting radical approaches, which provided the ground for radicals in the country to take control.