Look for more of this in the coming years:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route off the Iranian coast, during the weekend, Pentagon officials said on Monday.

The captain of one of the U.S. ships was in the process of giving an order to fire but the order was not implemented as the Iranian boats then moved away, one official said.

The official said the five Iranian speedboats “pretty much swarmed” the three U.S. vessels in international waters with the Iranians threatening that one of the U.S. ships would blow up in minutes.

U.S. officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, were confirming a report first aired by CNN.

This isn’t a fluke, nor is it the Gulf of Tonkin or Hearst and the Spanish-American War.  Sheesh. 

This is in fact Iran’s modus operandi, and it won’t dissipate anytime soon.  When the republic wishes to make a statement, they do it with gunboats.  When they want to make a splash and demand some attention, they kidnap sailors.  It’s a subtle expression of hard power, coming from a regime desperate for such power.  After a decade of direct and bloody confrontation, the Iranians learned that foreign influence can be be expressed in some not-so-obvious forms.  They can’t fight a war with guns and bombs like the U.S. could, but they can fight with fuel.  Iran has the unique position of being a key contributor to the global oil market, while having direct terrirtorial influence over the exports of other nations.  It’s a desperate last resort, no doubt, since it would hurt their own economic interests as well, while risking confrontations such as this one from over the weekend.   

But that threat has never stopped Iran.  This is a nation mired by a history of cutting off it’s own nose, expelling and scaring away foreign investment for the sake of war and Islam.  This is the cyclical behavior often exhibited in this conflicted country–temporary tolerance, freer markets, followed by a sharp reversion to statism and intolerance. 

It’s bulimia as statecraft, and it has plagued the republic from the very beginning.

More here. 

UPDATE:

Blake Hounshell adds to the oil speculation theory. 

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