© Reuters/MC3 Cale Hatch/US Navy/HandoutThe U.S. Navy supply ship USNS Rappahannock maintains station as it prepares a replenishment at sea in this U.S. Navy photo handout photo taken in the South China Sea March 21, 2012.
Even small boats dwarfed by the size of the U.S. vessel can still pose a threat. Two suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden boat into the USS Cole in 2000, blowing a massive hole in its side and killing 17 U.S. sailors.
But the incident was also reminder of how quickly a confrontation can turn deadly in the Gulf, where tensions with Iran have triggered military buildup by the United States and its allies.
Those killed and injured in Monday's incident were not Iranians and it was unclear whether the incident may have been a mere misunderstanding. The UAE state news agency, quoting a government official, identified all of the dead and wounded as Indian nationals.
The shooting took place in the waters near the UAE port of Jebel Ali, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said in a statement.
"The U.S. crew repeatedly attempted to warn the vessel's operators to turn away from their deliberate approach," it said, adding the incident was under investigation.
Accelerating Deployment
The incident came as the U.S. military has bolstered its presence in the region, sending additional fighter jets, deploying a floating naval base and doubling the number of mine-sweepers in recent months.
Iran renewed threats on Sunday to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil exports pass, unless sanctions imposed over its nuclear program are revoked.
Shortly before news of the shooting incident broke, the Pentagon announced it was accelerating the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, assuring that the United States keeps two of the massive nuclear-powered ships and their entourages of warships in the tense region.
Pentagon spokesman George Little was vague about the motives behind the decision to send in the USS John C. Stennis roughly four months ahead of schedule. But he denied it was tied exclusively to Iran.
"This is about a wide-range of U.S. security interests in the region. We're always mindful of the challenges posed by Iran but let me be very clear -- this is not a decision that is based solely on the challenge posed by Iran," Little said.
The former CIA agent, John O’Neill who worked with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York and New Jersey stated that the USS Cole was hit by a specially-configured Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine. Israeli tests of the missile in May 2000 in the waters off Sri Lanka demonstrated it could hit a target 930 miles away. The ex-CIA agent also stated that Ambassador Bodine threw John O’Neill and his team out of Yemen lest their investigation began uncovering evidence that the Cole was not blown up by an explosive-laden boat but by an Israeli cruise missile.
The former CIA agent said the reason for the Israeli attack was to further galvanize U.S. public opinion against both Al Qaeda and the Democrats in the weeks prior to the 2000 presidential elections. The Bush-Cheney team could blame the Democrats for not taking the Al Qaeda threat seriously. However, this is exactly the tact the Bush administration took after taking office: failure to support the CIA-FBI’s Alex Station, pressuring John O’Neill and other agents like Minneapolis agent Coleen Rowley and others across the nation who detected activity involving Arab flight students, and pulling the plug on a major data mining operation directed against Al Qaeda code named Able Danger, which was being jointly run by the DIA and the Special Operations Command.
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