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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/9/2017 9:12:27 AM


Dozens killed in car bomb in Syrian town
Yahoo News Photo Staff

Dozens of people were killed when a car bomb went off in a busy market in a rebel-held Syrian town along the Turkish border, activists and rescue workers said.

The explosion ripped through the central market in the town of Azaz in the northern province of Aleppo, damaging a government building and local court house as well.

Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said those killed included six opposition fighters. He said the explosion was caused by a rigged water or fuel tanker, which explains the large blast and high death toll.

Other activist groups, including the Azaz Media center, put the death toll at 50, adding that search and rescue operations continued for at least two hours after the explosion. The Observatory said the explosion took place near the local court house operated by rebel groups. (AP)


(Yahoo News)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/9/2017 10:47:58 AM

The Saddam interrogation: Ten years after the tyrant's execution, the CIA agent who grilled him reveals the shattering truth... that everything the US thought it knew was WRONG


  • · CIA analyst John Nixon grilled the ruthless dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein
  • · In the course of interrogations, Saddam 'turned our assumptions upside down'
  • · Debriefing The President: The Interrogation Of Saddam Hussein, by John Nixon, is published on December 29
  • I had been up for 27 hours and was flat-out exhausted, but the news sent jolts of adrenaline through me like I’d never experienced before.

    A Special Forces team hunting the man we called High Value Target No 1 had pulled someone from a hole in the ground. He answered the description.

    And my bosses at the CIA were grilling me, the expert.

    Could this burly, unkempt man truly be Saddam Hussein, the ruthless dictator of Iraq? The most wanted man in the world?

    Scroll down for video

    Could this burly, unkempt man truly be Saddam Hussein, the ruthless dictator of Iraq? The most wanted man in the world?

    It was December 13, 2003, and I’d been in Iraq for eight weeks – a CIA analyst looking for leads that might take us to Saddam and his notorious henchmen. That was when I was called to see Buzzy Krongard, the CIA’s executive director.

    The war to topple the regime had been going for nearly nine months, yet when it came to Saddam, all we’d turned up were ‘Elvis sightings’, as we called them. Until, that is, troops searching a farm near Saddam’s home village of Tikrit found a large bearded man concealed in a tiny underground bunker.

    Now a group of senior officers were quizzing me in Krongard’s office; how, they asked, would I make a definitive identification? I told them about the tribal tattoos on Saddam’s right hand and wrist, the bullet scar on his left leg and that his lower lip tended to droop to one side, something I picked up from studying videotapes.

    Krongard interrupted me: ‘We need to make sure this is Saddam and not one of those body doubles.’

    The myth – and it was a myth – that Saddam maintained multiple lookalikes was a source of wry amusement to those of us who worked in intelligence, but I decided silence was the better part of valour and started compiling a list of questions only the dictator could answer.

    The military was flying the putative Saddam to Baghdad airport that night and it was decided we’d make the identification there.

    In late 2007, I was summoned to give a detailed presentation to George W. Bush at the Oval Office. What kind of a man had Saddam been, he asked me?

    At midnight, after a long wait, the convoy was ready. Men in night-vision goggles drove us at 100mph down the Airport Road, a no-go zone at night. At the airport, a side road led to a series of low-slung blockhouses that once housed Saddam’s Special Republican Guard. Inside, I found pandemonium and another wait until finally a GI said, ‘OK, guys. You’re up.’

    Suddenly the door opened and I immediately found myself sucking in air. There he was, sitting on a metal folding chair, wearing a white dishdasha robe and blue quilted windbreaker.

    There was no denying that the man had charisma. He was big – 6ft 1in – and thickly built. Even as a prisoner who was certain to be executed, he exuded an air of importance.

    Author John Nixon

    Author John Nixon

    I spoke first through a translator. ‘I have some questions I’d like to ask you, and you are to answer them truthfully. Do you understand?’

    Saddam nodded. ‘When was the last time you saw your sons alive?’

    I expected Saddam to be defiant, but I was taken aback by the aggression of his reply: ‘Who are you guys? Are you military intelligence? Mukhabarat [civilian intelligence]? Answer me. Identify yourselves!’

    I noted his tribal tattoos and that his mouth drooped. Now I needed to see his bullet wound.

    There was so much we wanted to know. How had he escaped from Baghdad? Who had helped him? He would not say, answering only the questions he wanted to.

    ‘Why don’t you ask me about politics? You could learn a lot from me,’ he barked. He was especially vocal on the rough treatment he’d received from the troops who brought him in, launching a long diatribe.

    I was incredulous. Here was a man who didn’t think twice about killing his own people complaining about a few scratches. He lifted his dishdasha to show the damage to his left leg. I saw an old scar. Was it the bullet wound, I asked him. He assented with a grunt – the final piece of proof. We’d got him.

    Capturing Saddam was all very well, but now we had to get to the truth about his regime, and in particular the weapons of mass destruction that had been the pretext for the invasion. His response was simply to mock us.

    Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein moments after his capture by US forces

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    ‘You found a traitor who led you to Saddam Hussein. Isn’t there one traitor who can tell you where the WMDs are?’ He warmed to the subject, saying Americans were a bunch of ignorant hooligans who did not understand Iraq and were intent on its destruction.

    ‘Iraq is not a terrorist nation,’ he said. ‘We did not have a relationship with (Osama) bin Laden, and did not have weapons of mass destruction... and were not a threat to our neighbours. But the American President [George W Bush] said Iraq wanted to attack his daddy and said we had ‘weapons of mass destruction.’

    Ignoring his goading, we asked Saddam if he’d ever considered using WMDs pre-emptively against US troops in Saudi Arabia. ‘We never thought about using weapons of mass destruction. It was not discussed. Use chemical weapons against the world? Is there anyone with full faculties who would do this? Who would use these weapons when they had not been used against us?’

    This was not what we had expected to hear. How, then, had America got it so wrong?

    Saddam had an answer: ‘The spirit of listening and understanding was not there – I don’t exclude myself from this blame.’ It was a rare acknowledgment that he could have done more to create a clearer picture of Iraq’s intentions.

    Was he playing with us, twisting the truth to spare his pride?

    Debriefing The President: The Interrogation Of Saddam Hussein, by John Nixon, is published on December 29 by Bantam Press at £16.99

    I asked about his notorious use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish city of Halabja during the Iran-Iraq war. He became furious. ‘I am not afraid of you or your president. I will do what I have to do to defend my country!’

    Then he turned to me and sneered: ‘But I did not make that decision.’

    We decided to close the briefing. As Saddam left the room, he glared at me. I have annoyed quite a few people in my life, but no one has ever looked at me with such murderous loathing.

    My superiors were delighted at the progress we were making, yet something nagged at me about the exchange. My gut told me that there was some truth in what Saddam had said. He was incensed about Halabja. Not because his officers had used chemical weapons – he showed no remorse – but because it had given Iran a propaganda field day.

    It was not the only thing that would surprise me. For example, in my years studying Saddam, I never doubted the received wisdom that his stepfather in Tikrit beat him. Many eminent psychiatrists who had analysed him from afar said this was why Saddam was so cruel and why he wanted nuclear weapons.

    Yet, in the course of my further interrogations, Saddam turned our assumptions upside down, saying his stepfather was the kindest man he had ever known: ‘Ibrahim Hasan – God bless him. If he had a secret, he would entrust me with it. I was more dear to him than his son, Idham.’

    I asked about the CIA’s belief that Saddam suffered great pain from a bad back and had given up red meat and cigars. He said he didn’t know where I was getting my intelligence, but it was wrong. He told me he smoked four cigars every day and loved red meat. He was also surprisingly fit.

    The CIA profile of Saddam suggested he was a chronic liar, yet he could be quite candid. Our perception that he ruled with an iron grip was also mistaken. It became clear from our interrogations that in his final years, Saddam seemed clueless about what had been happening inside Iraq. He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defence of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm.

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    Saddam was quick, too, to deny involvement in 9/11. ‘Look at who was involved,’ he said. ‘What countries did they come from? Saudi Arabia. And this [ringleader] Muhammad Atta, was he an Iraqi? No. He was Egyptian. Why do you think I was involved in the attacks?’

    Saddam had actually believed 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer because Washington would need his secular government to help fight fundamentalism. How woefully wrong he had been.

    During our talks, we often heard muffled explosions. Saddam inferred things were not going well for the US forces and took pleasure in the fact. ‘You are going to fail,’ he said. ‘You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq.’ History has proved him right. But back then, I was curious why he felt that way.

    ‘Because you do not know the language, the history, and the Arab mind,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to know the Iraqi people without knowing its weather and its history. The difference is between night and day and winter and summer. That’s why they say the Iraqis are hard-headed – because of the summer heat.’

    THE ONE SUBJECT THAT MADE HIM CRY

    Doting dad: Saddam and Rana

    Doting dad: Saddam and Rana

    The only time Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein showed any emotion during my interviews was when we discussed his daughters, Rana and Raghid.

    His eyes became watery and his voice quivered. ‘I miss them terribly,’ he said. ‘I enjoyed a wonderful relationship with them. They loved me very much, and I loved them very much.’

    Saddam also said he was proud of his murderous sons Uday and Qusay, but realistic about their shortcomings. He sometimes found it necessary to punish them.

    Uday was a particular problem for him. He said he was incensed when he learned that Uday kept a fleet of Bentleys, Jaguars and Mercedes in a garage protected by Republican Guard soldiers, saying: ‘What kind of message are we sending to the Iraqi people, who must suffer under sanctions and do without?’

    Saddam had the cars torched after a drunk Uday shot and wounded Saddam’s half-brother Watban at a family party.

    The altercation prompted the 1995 defection of Hussein and Saddam Kamel, the husbands of Saddam’s two daughters, to Jordan.

    He chuckled and added: ‘Next summer, when it is hot, they might revolt against you. The summer of 1958 got a little hot. In the 1960s, when it was hot, we had a revolution. You might tell that to President Bush!’

    It was several years and several more postings to Iraq before I could explain the realities of Iraq to the President, face to face. By now, Saddam had been tried and executed, finally dispatched in late 2006.

    But in late 2007, I was summoned to give a detailed presentation to George W. Bush at the Oval Office. What kind of a man had Saddam been, he asked me?

    I told him that he was disarming at first and used self-deprecating wit to put you at ease.

    The President looked as if he was going to lose his cool. I quickly explained that the real Saddam was sarcastic, arrogant and sadistic, which seemed to calm Bush down.

    He looked at Vice-President Dick Cheney and their eyes locked in a knowing way. As I was leaving, he joked: ‘You sure Saddam didn’t say where he put those vials of anthrax?’ Everyone laughed, but I thought his crack inappropriate. America had lost more than 4,000 troops.

    Several months later, I was asked to go back to the White House. This time, the President looked annoyed and distracted and asked for a briefing on the Shia cleric called Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, then engaged in dangerous insurgency against the coalition. This was not on the agenda.

    Trying to gain a few seconds, I said: ‘Well, that is the $64,000 question’ Bush looked at me and said: ‘Why don’t you make it the $74,000 question, or whatever your salary is, and answer?’ What an a***hole!

    In his 2010 memoir, Bush wrote: ‘I decided I would not criticise the hardworking patriots of the CIA for the faulty intelligence on Iraq.’ But that is exactly what he did. He blamed the agency for everything that went wrong and called its analysis ‘guesswork’ while hearing only what he wanted to hear.

    I do not wish to imply that Saddam was innocent. He was a ruthless dictator who plunged his region into chaos and bloodshed. But in hindsight, the thought of having an ageing and disengaged Saddam in power seems almost comforting in comparison with the wasted effort of our brave men and women in uniform and the rise of Islamic State, not to mention the £2.5 trillion spent to build a new Iraq.

    © John Nixon, 2016

    Debriefing The President: The Interrogation Of Saddam Hussein, by John Nixon, is published on December 29 by Bantam Press at £16.99. Offer price £12.74 until December 27. Pre-order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640; p&p free on orders over £15.




    (dailymail.co.uk)

    "Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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    Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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    RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
    1/9/2017 2:14:09 PM
    California braces for flooding, avalanches as Sierra gets slammed with rain, snow

    — A powerful storm blasted the Sierra Nevada with waves of torrential rain and heavy snowfall on Sunday, leaving a vast swath of California bracing for potentially disastrous floods, avalanches and mudslides.

    The latest weather comes just days after the mountains around Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park received several feet of snow over the span of a week. At Mammoth Mountain, a ski resort bordering Yosemite, the 11,000-foot peak got 84 inches of snow in just two days. This week’s forecast calls for several more feet of snow, as well as heavy rain, part of a meteorological phenomenon known as the “Pineapple Express,” which brings an atmospheric river of warm moisture north from the tropics.

    The conditions that accompany the latest band of moisture hovering over Northern California bear some semblance to those of a 1997 storm that flooded the Yosemite Valley and led to a years-long, $250 million recovery effort.

    Park rangers closed roads into the Yosemite preserve over the weekend, and local officials in mountain towns handed out sandbags for residents to reinforce their homes against the possible deluge.

    The storm will continue to pound the Sierra Nevada range this week. Weather experts predict that colder temperatures could possibly turn the moisture from rain into heavy snow, bringing the potential for up to seven additional feet of snow in the mountains.

    At the highest elevations, the cold air could translate to as much as 20 feet of snow on the peaks, according to forecasts from the National Weather Service.

    Such high snow accumulation could mitigate California’s enduring drought by building up the Sierra snowpack. Farming is a crucial facet of the California economy, and the dry conditions and water shortages in recent years have hurt the state’s agriculture industry. The snowpack, which begins to melt in the spring, helps fill the reservoirs that are critical for growing crops during the summer months.

    Frank Gehrke, the chief snow surveyor for the California Department of Water Resources, said the storm cycle — though potentially dangerous in the short term — could help quench the region’s drought conditions.

    “This series of storms that we’re experiencing . . . are certainly going to have an impact on water supply, but we’ve got to wait and see how things settle out,” Gehrke said. “The ongoing concern is how warm or cold any particular event is. Warm can bring flooding, and a cold event can build the snowpack. That’s one thing we’re monitoring closely.”

    As the storm settled over the mountains during the weekend, roads were closed and resorts halted operations. Visitors had to be kept off the slopes, as extremely high winds and low visibility coupled with thunder and lightning made skiing too dangerous.

    “We haven’t seen a storm cycle like this in the last five years of really heavy snowfall,” said Lauren Burke, a spokeswoman for Mammoth Mountain resort. “With the amount of rain that’s in the forecast, flooding is definitely on the forefront of people’s minds.”

    In addition to flooding, the prospect of massive snowfall has experts concerned about catastrophic avalanches. The Sierra Avalanche Center issued a Category 5 warning and ranked the probability of hazardous conditions as “extreme,” noting that “due to significant loading from rain and heavy wet snow, natural and human triggered avalanches are certain in the next 24 hours.”

    “We’re worried about infrastructure, roads, houses in avalanche zones, and potentially seeing some very large — up to historic — avalanches,” said Steve Reynaud, an avalanche forecaster at the center. “There’s high probability that things can slide big. Things that we haven’t seen potentially in a 10- to 20- to 30-year cycle.”

    Brian Kniveton, a Truckee-area resident, joined volunteers at the Squaw Valley Fire Department to fill sandbags as the Truckee River swelled and carried chunks of floating ice.

    “I just felt like paying it forward and trying to help do my part to keep North Lake Tahoe a community who can rely on each other,” Kniveton said.

    This region of California has seen extensive flooding, but it has been quite a while since a system has come through with this kind of potential. Twenty years ago, Yosemite’s largest recorded flood was generated by a rainfall event not unlike what the park experienced this weekend. All of the park’s major floods resulted from a simple combination of warm rain falling on heavy snowpack.

    In the 1997 storm, torrential rain melted the snowpack and the Merced River burst over its banks on New Year’s Day. Water levels in Yosemite Valley peaked at 16 feet, inundating park infrastructure. Electrical, water and sewer systems were ruined, according to the park’s recovery report. The major roads into and out of the park were washed out, leaving more than 2,000 guests and employees stranded as they watched the floodwater pour into the valley.

    “Every cliff was a waterfall,” a Yosemite spokesman told The Washington Post’s Ann Grimes in 1997. “Yosemite’s cliffs put Niagara Falls to shame.”

    It took three days — during which time the water continued to rise — for the stranded parkgoers and residents to be evacuated by convoy. Downstream, 100,000 people were ordered to evacuate California’s Central Valley. On Jan. 3, 1997, the Merced River reached a record 23.43 feet at Yosemite’s Pohono Bridge, where flooding begins at 10 feet. The resulting damage was so significant that park officials closed Yosemite to the public until March 14, and even then, it was only partially reopened.

    The federal government allocated more than $250 million to recovery and flood prevention projects, which weren’t fully completed until 2012.

    This week’s cycle of storms began when high pressure — which has all but dominated California weather for the past five years — shifted east. Its absence allowed waves of low pressure to wash onto the West Coast.

    Wind flows counterclockwise around low pressure, and swirling air draws warm moisture north from the tropics; the result is what’s known as an atmospheric river. Due to this particular phenomenon’s origins in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii — and its ability to quickly beam storms toward the West Coast — meteorologists call it the “Pineapple Express.”

    “We think of it as a fire hose, because that’s basically what it looks like,” said Jim Anderson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Hanford, Calif.

    That fire hose of moisture poured down over much of California as rain and snow in two sessions — one at midweek and a second, stronger wave during the weekend.

    Between New Year’s Day and Thursday, the Squaw Valley ski resort north of Lake Tahoe racked up 83 inches of snow on its peaks. Areas west of the peaks were inundated with nearly 10 inches of rain in 48 hours.

    Highways through the Sierra Nevada, including Interstate 80 at Donner Pass, were closed during the heaviest snow. When they reopened, six-foot walls of snow towered on the shoulders, and traffic crept through the wintry tunnels.

    Sauerbrey reported from Truckee. Fritz and Shapiro reported from Washington. Mayumi Elegado in Truckee contributed to this report.

    (The Washington Post)

    "Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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    Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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    RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
    1/9/2017 2:41:47 PM

    Disclosure Coming? Chilean Navy Releases Stunning UFO Footage

    by Lance Schuttler , The Mind Unleashed

    For the past two years, Chilean authorities have been studying a video from the Navy that captured incredible footage of an unidentified flying object (UFO). Now, that video is being released to the public.

    The CEFAA studies unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and is the governmental agency in charge of the investigation. The CEFAA has committees that are comprised of military experts, technicians and academic experts from a range of different fields. The director of CEFAA, General Ricardo Bermúdez said of the investigation:

    “We do not know what it was, but we do know what it was not.”

    On November 11th, 2014, a Chilean helicopter was flying a routine daytime patrol mission when the two pilots spotted a mysterious object that appeared to be flying around the same speed as them (150mph) at a distance of about 35-40 miles away.

    The pilots then contacted radar stations nearby to report the unknown flying object. Both radar stations didn’t detect the object (but did detect the helicopter) and confirmed that no military or civilian aircraft had been reported in the area and that no aircraft had been authorized to fly in the controlled space where the mysterious object was located.

    Additionally, the pilots tried to communicate with the object using the multi-national civilian bandwidth and didn’t get a response. The helicopter’s camera was also not able to lock on to the object.

    CEFAA said that the two pilots were “highly trained professionals and they were absolutely certain they could not explain what they saw.” One pilot described the mysterious object as a “flat, elongated structure with two thermal spotlights like discharges that did not coincide with the axle of motion.” Also that it was “white with a semi-oval shape on the horizontal axis.”

    What made the spotting also unique was that the object discharge a very hot substance and moved away entirely from the substance. Because the videos are done in infrared, it appears in black and white (briefly switches to color in HD). The black “smoke” or “gas” that appears in the videos means that it is a very hot substance, because it was taken in infrared.

    This clip shows the expulsion of the hot material from the UFO and the UFO’s movement away from the plume.

    Meteorologists stated that no weather balloons were in the sky at that time, and said that a balloon would not move horizontally along with the plane because the wind was blowing from the west towards the shore. The possibility of a drone was also ruled out because it would have been seen on radar.

    After nearly two years of investigation, CEFAA’s director Ricardo Bermúdez declared that the object was unidentifiable:

    “This has been one of the most important cases in my career as director of CEFAA because our Committee was at its best. The CEFAA is well regarded partly because there is full participation from the scientists of the academic world, the armed forces through their representatives, and the aeronautic personnel from the DGAC, including its Director. I am extremely pleased as well with the conclusion reached which is logical and unpretentious. The great majority of committee members agreed to call the subject in question a UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) due to the number of highly researched reasons that it was unanimously agreed could not explain it.”

    In other words, Chile just officially declared the sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO), or in their terms, an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP).

    For those who are skeptical of UFOs and related topics, recall that multiple former NASA astronauts have spoken out about the reality of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings. Two of those people include Dr. Brian O’ Leary and Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

    Dr. O’ Leary once said in an interview: “There is abundant evidence that we are being contacted and that civilizations have been visiting us for a very long time…”

    Dr. Mitchell wrote to John Podesta, which was revealed a few months ago in the Wikileaks email revelations: “It is urgent that we agree on a date and time to meet to discuss Disclosure and Zero Point Energy, at your earliest available after your departure. My Catholic colleague Terri Mansfield will be there too, to bring us up to date on the Vatican’s awareness of ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Remember, our nonviolent ETI from the contiguous universe are helping us bring zero point energy to Earth. They will not tolerate any forms of military violence on Earth or in space.”

    What are your thoughts about this most recent revelation from Chile? What do you think the object is? Will there be more revelations like this to come out? Do you think ETs and UFOs exist?



    http://themindunleashed.com/2017/01/disclosure-coming-chilean-navy-releases-stunning-ufo-footage.html

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    "Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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    Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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    RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
    1/9/2017 4:42:54 PM

    US Navy ship fired warning shots at Iranian vessels in Strait of Hormuz – report

    Edited time: 9 Jan, 2017 14:52


    Guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan (DDG 72). © Chris Bishop / US Navy / AFP

    A US Navy ship fired three warning shots at four vessels of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard after they closed in at high speed in the Strait of Hormuz, according to US defense officials cited by Reuters.

    The ‘USS Mahan’ destroyer apparently tried to establish contact with the approaching Iranian vessels and asked them to reduce their speed, but they did not respond, according to unnamed officials quoted by the news outlet.

    The incident took place on Sunday.

    According to Reuters, Iranian ships came as close as 800 meters (2,624ft) to the ‘USS Mahan’, which had been guarding other US vessels.

    In late November, a small Iranian vessel pointed its gun at a US Navy chopper in the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon announced at the time. The incident happened in international waters, US military officials noted.

    READ MORE: Iranian ship aims gun at US Navy helicopter in Strait of Hormuz – Pentagon

    The encounters are just the latest in a spate of similar incidents involving the Iranian and US Navies in 2016. In July, the 'USS New Orleans' and its escort ship, the 'USS Stout', a guided missile destroyer, were approached by several Iranian vessels whose crews filmed the sailors.

    READ MORE: Iranian vessels mounted with machine guns approach US warship in Strait of Hormuz

    The most widely-reported case, however, occurred in January 2016, when 10 US sailors were taken into custody after their boats crossed into Iranian waters. Footage later emerged showing US servicemen kneeling on the deck of the patrol boat with their hands up, and later seated in a room being given tea and food by the Iranians. The Pentagon later announced that the US sailors had crossed into Iranian waters due to a malfunction in navigation equipment.

    READ MORE: Iran seized ‘1,000s of valuable docs’ from detained US sailors, Revolutionary Guard general claims

    The Strait of Hormuz is located between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. It is the only seaway from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is among the world’s key maritime ‘choke points.’

    Tehran has repeatedly threatened to close the path for the US and other international powers during political tensions. The Strait of Hormuz is crucial to both regional security and the global economy, and accounts for about one-third of global oil shipments. Keeping maritime traffic through the strait open is essential for gas and oil importers such as the US and China.

    The 'USS Mahan' is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, commissioned in 1998. It is armed with dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 nautical miles (around 1,900km) and are used for precise targeting.

    (RT)

    "Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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