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U.S. Officials Detail Face-off in the Persian Gulf over Iran's Missile Boats
(Wall Street Journal) Dion Nissenbaum - For two weeks in May, the U.S. military shadowed two Iranian commercial boats sailing around the Persian Gulf after it saw Iranian forces load missiles into launchers on their decks, according to U.S. officials. Eventually, the Iranian ships pulled into a harbor and unloaded the missiles that had set off the alarms. "The conversion of a merchant ship for an attack in and of itself is a very provocative act," said one U.S. official familiar with the intelligence. U.S. officials said a U.S. destroyer tracked 20 Iranian boats leaving Iran, crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and entering Emirati waters shortly before small explosions blew holes in the sides of four ships there. The Pentagon later accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of dispatching a team of divers to plant magnetic mines on the ships.