US navy destroyer rescues Iranian boat from Somali pirates

By artappraiser on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 2:23am |

Associated Press, Jan. 6, 2012

A US navy destroyer has rescued an Iranian fishing boat that had been commandeered by suspected pirates just days after Tehran warned America to keep its warships out of the Gulf.

US forces flying off the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd responded to a distress call from the Iranian vessel, the Al Molai, which had been held captive for more than 40 days, the US navy said Friday. The Kidd was sailing in the Arabian sea, after leaving the Gulf, when it came to the sailors' aid.

A US navy team boarded the ship Thursday and detained 15 suspected Somali pirates. They had been holding the 13-member Iranian crew hostage and were using the boat as a "mother ship" for pirating operations in the Gulf.

Amid escalating tensions with Tehran, the Obama administration reveled in delivering the news [....]

URL:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/06/us-navy-rescues-iranian-boat

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with short US Navy video taken from the air:

You’re Welcome, Tehran! U.S. Navy Frees Iranians From Pirates
By Spencer Ackerman, "DangerRoom" @ Wired.com, Jan. 6, 2012

Just days after Iran threatened the U.S. Navy and bloviated about closing off the Strait of Hormuz, the Navy saved 13 Iranian commercial sailors from pirates. Anytime you want to express your gratitude, Tehran, the Pentagon will take your call [....]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/navy-iranian-pirates/

Also see:

US Forces Rescue 13 Iranian Fishermen
Kidnaped by Somali Pirates and Held Captive for Two Months
By Nader Uskowi, Uskowi on Iran, Jan 6, 2012

http://www.uskowioniran.com/2012/01/us-forces-rescue-13-iranian-fishermen.html

by artappraiser on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 3:08am

The cynic in me expects Iran to say that it was all a puppet show; that we're supporting the pirates, or something like that.

by Verified Atheist on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 7:09am

One thing I learned checking out the Iran state news site IRNA from time to time over the years is that one can never underestimate the bizarreness and creativity of the propaganda that the Iranian government will try to spin on current events....

Edit to add: but right now this appears to be the only thing they can come up with, at least as far as the English version of their site goes:

http://www.irna.ir/ENNewsShow.aspx?NID=30753403&SRCH=1

The US forces did something humanitarian; I surmise they like to encourage that in evil empires, and they would also like to point out that they do the same all the time....

by artappraiser on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 4:26pm

Hmm, when exactly was the distress call made?

Did a crew member manage to escape the captors for long enough to make one? Or was the distress call made at the time of the capture?

If at the time of capture, did the US Navy respond immediately and just take some time to get there? Did they wait for some sort of backchannel thumbs up from the Iranians? Did they have to search for the boat? Or did they wait for a good day for a heroic rescue?

The guardian is usually pretty good at providing enough detail that a reader can figure out the story, but not this time....

by erica20 on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 3:31pm

The guardian is usually

It's not a Guardian story, it's an AP story at their website. But yeah, I was hoping to more development of this wire story, too, that's why I went and looked for other links. It's too soon after breaking, I guess, but I hope someone does some follow up.

Like you I have some suspicions. On the one hand, if the Pentagon really planned a PR coup with this thing, wouldn't they have made sure more media knew more about it beforehand, on the other hand, in this situation they also had to worry about if it went FUBAR....

by artappraiser on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 4:10pm

Bad on me for opining about lack of coverage on something without first even glancing at the front page of my dead-tree version of the New York Times:

C.J. Chivers,

reporting from ABOARD THE FISHING VESSEL AL MULAHI, in the Gulf of Yemen, yesterday:

For Iranians Waylaid by Pirates, U.S. to the Rescue

I haven't read the whole thing yet, and haven't a clue how he got on the ship yesterday (i.e., was he "embedded" with a Navy op from its start?) But I will say that I have the highest respect for him as a reporter, I truly think he is one of our best.

by artappraiser on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 5:25pm

More follow up/details,still filing from the freed ship:

Bold Lie Turns Run-In at Sea Into Dramatic Rescue

By C.J. Chivers, New York Times, Jan. 7/8, 2012

(alt. title: Iranians Tell of Six Weeks of Fear with Somali Pirates)

....In interviews by two journalists from The New York Times who spent Thursday night on the rescued vessel, the former hostages, the captured pirates and the American sailors guarding them told of a drama on the open ocean: Naval vessels, helicopters and inflatable boats first thwarted a pirate attack and then converged on the pirates’ roving base, freeing 13 hostages who had expected to die.

The operation was a geopolitical thriller, ....

by artappraiser on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:24am

I don't recall where I heard it but apparently a different ship was being approached/attacked by pirates and put out a distress message saying so. The navy responded, chased off the pirates, and followed them to the pirates' mother ship which they boarded and where they found the Iranians.

The Navy did not choose to take a risk even though the captives were Iranian, they discovered them and found that they were Iranians in the course of doing what they should have done. They then treated the Iranian fishermen as they should have been treated [After checking them for horns and cloven feet] and Iran responded with an expression of gratitude that the U.S. Navy had done what the military of any country should do.

by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 6:03pm

Yes, you have it correct--

Related Chivers' narrative from The Times link above:

Mahmed Younes, 28, the fishing vessel’s captain, said he and his crew had been captured roughly 45 days ago by pirates in a skiff, who boarded their 82-foot dhow and forced it to an anchorage in the northern Somali port of Xaafuun. There, the pirates took on provisions and more gunmen.

In late December the pirates, using their hostages to run the dhow, set back out to sea, hunting for a tanker or large cargo ship to capture and hold for ransom.

For several days, Al Mulahi roamed the Gulf of Oman, unmolested under its Iranian flag, the pirates and former hostages said. They saw several ships. But the pirates’ leader, Bashir Bhotan, 32, did not think any of them would command a high ransom. They let them pass.

“The pirates told us, ‘If you get us a good ship, we will let you go free,’ ” Captain Younes said. “We told them, ‘How can we get you a ship? We are fishermen, not hunters.’ ”

On Thursday morning, six of the pirates set out in a fiberglass skiff and found their quarry — the Sunshine, 100 miles from the shore of Oman. One of the pirates, Mohammed Mahmoud, 33, later said this was the type of vessel they would hope might fetch a ransom of several million dollars.

Brandishing a rocket-propelled grenade and several Kalashnikov rifles, they rushed alongside, threw a grappling hook and tried to lash a ladder to the Sunshine’s side. They hoped to scale the gunwales and seize the bridge.

Their plans unraveled immediately. As the Sunshine radioed for help, and tried to deter the boarding by spraying the pirates with fire hoses, the pirates were unable to board.

“Our ladder broke,” Mr. Mahmoud said.

Then an American helicopter appeared.

Neither the pirates nor the crew of the Sunshine had known it, but three Navy ships — the Stennis; the U.S.N.S. Rainier, a supply ship; and the U.S.S. Mobile Bay, a guided-missile cruiser — were steaming in formation a few miles away. The carrier was taking on provisions from the Rainier and had several helicopters in the air when the Sunshine radioed its distress call.

Aboard the carrier, Rear Adm. Craig S. Faller, who commands the carrier strike group, looked at the chart and radar images of the Sunshine’s location with something like disbelief. The Sunshine and the Stennis were only a few miles apart. “These might be the dumbest pirates ever,” he said.

Thing is, while the Admiral said "dumbest pirates ever," sounds like Chivers is suggesting it was quite smart of them to chose a ship under the Iranian flag as their hostage/base, as less chance others would mess with them

The rest of the story is quite interesting (on page 2 of the article,) includes things like tricking some of the captured pirates into thinking they were letting them go

by artappraiser on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 9:18pm

U.S. Navy Reports Second Rescue of Iranian Mariners

By Rick Gladstone, New York Times, Jan. 10/11, 2012

In the second diplomacy-tinged sea rescue in less than a week, a vessel on patrol with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet near the Persian Gulf saved a group of distressed Iranian mariners on Tuesday, pulling them to safety from a cargo dhow that was foundering with a flooded engine room, the naval central command reported.

In a statement, the command said the Coast Guard patrol boat Monomoy, on assignment with a Fifth Fleet task force in the northern Arabian Gulf, approached the stricken Iranian dhow, the Ya-Hussayn, after the dhow’s crew hailed the Monomoy with flares and flashlights before dawn.

“The dhow’s master requested assistance from Monomoy indicating the engine room was flooding and deemed not seaworthy,” the statement said.

The six Iranian crewmen — two aboard the Ya-Hussayn and four on a life raft tied to its stern — were transferred to the Monomoy, the statement said, and were given “water, blankets and halal meals,” noting that such meals are routinely stowed aboard Coast Guard ships “to provide to Muslim mariners in distress.”

Following the customary protocols, the Monomoy crew informed the Iranian maritime rescue service, and the six rescued crewmen were later transferred by inflatable boats to the Naji 7, an Iranian Coast Guard vessel. The statement quoted the owner of the stricken dhow, Hakim Hamid-Awi, as thanking the Monomoy crew and saying, “Without your help, we were dead.”

[....]

While the Fifth Fleet has been publicizing its good Samaritan role, the rescues have been played down or ridiculed by Iran’s state-run news media.

The Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted by Press TV, an Iranian satellite channel, as saying that the Stennis-led rescue operation was fairly routine and would not reduce the tensions between the nations.

The Fars News Agency, which has close ties to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, suggested that the rescue had been staged.

Fars reported that video of the rescue released by the United States was “like a Hollywood film with a fixed location and specific actors,” which “shows the Americans were looking at using it for propaganda advantage.”

Robert Mackey contributed reporting.

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 11:09pm

Iranian Navy saves U.S. cargo ship from pirates
By Stephen C. Webster, Raw Story, May 24, 2012

by artappraiser on Thu, 05/24/2012 - 11:50pm

US navy destroyer rescues Iranian boat from Somali pirates

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