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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

> According to the British maritime security firm Ambrey, the tanker was told via radio to stop by the Iranians. When the tanker didn’t comply, the Iranians opened fire.

What would happen if a ship refused to comply with a radio order to stop issued by the USN/USCG, while traveling just off the coast of the US?

Would it be fired upon? Boarded? Would either action be legal, or illegal under international law?

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> Richmond Voyager was more than 20 miles off the coast of Muscat, Oman, and was in international waters when the Iranian Navy approached it.

Not sure what you mean by “just off the coast” but 20 miles from Oman would put it ~100 miles from Iran.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but in this context, wasn't the Iranian ship’s action an act of piracy?

It's state sanctioned and perpetrated by their navy, so I think that makes it commerce raiding.

How far is “just off the coast”.

This tankers appears to have been in international waters. The Iranians had no reason to stop it, board it, etc. The exception here would be suspected terrorism, drug trafficking, or other major crime (none of which appears to be the case here).

The US generally considers anything within 12 miles to be within American territorial waters. Inside that, a request to stop would need to be observed. Outside that, the US doesn’t have a legal right to stop or board a vessel (subject to exceptions as noted above).

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-north-korean-seize-ships-...

Yes, that falls within the exceptions I mentioned - in this case, NK ships are suspected of transferring sanctioned good from ship to ship to avoid sanctions. Like manythings involving the high seas, there’s a fair bit of gray. But Iran’s propensity to stop, search, and seize vessels in international waters isn’t generally one of those gray things.

What exactly are US ships doing 10,000 miles from home?

In the case of this part of the ocean, various things, but they've recently been seizing Iranian ships.

In this case, working with our allies to enforce international sanctions.

The ship the Iranians tried to stop violated sanctions of the Iranian government. The U.S. is a bit hypocritical. We ignore U.N. resolutions when it suits us in case you think violating U.N. sanctions somehow is a higher standard than violating Iranian sanctions.

As you can see from the Iranian reaction to USN assets arriving on the scene, Iran simply doesn't get to enforce sanctions on other countries in international waters. Reasonable people will read USN interdiction of Iranian-based tankers as lawful enforcement of sanctions, and Iranian retaliatory seizures as piracy.

You may define “reasonable” any way you want to. The fact is that U.S. has sufficient military power to enforce its will on others while having enough soft power to, usually, wrap those actions in a cloak of U.N. legitimacy. One should not confuse this with morality or justice or righteousness of action. The U.S. has a long history of hypocritical justifications against those it deems foes. For instance we didn’t really care all that much when Israel acquired nuclear weapons but suddenly care when the Iranians want to acquire them.

We look askance when others do to us as we do to them but we shouldn’t. It’s ok to admit that we (the U.S.) are hypocrites when it comes to this stuff. We decry (justly in my opinion) the Russian invasion of Ukraine while having engaged in even more pointlessly stupid and evil invasions of other nations (like Iraq).

That is correct. The US has sufficient military power to enforce a global sanctions regime on Iran, and everybody knows it, very much including Iran. Iran, meanwhile, has no such ability. Sovereign states relate to each other in a Hobbesian state of nature, not under the due process laws of any one country.

If Iran could do anything other than prey on hapless commercial vessels, people might look at the situation differently. But they can't, and people see it for what it appears to be: illegitimate.

But they can't, and people see it for what it appears to be: illegitimate.

During the Revolutionary War British officers were aghast when American soldiers deliberately tried to shoot British officers during battle. It was considered uncivilized by the British to do this. People fight back any way that they are able to. It’s convenient for the superpower to say forms of warfare or striking back are “illegitimate” when those forms are contrary to how they want things to be fought.

It is not illegitimate for Iran to fight back the only way they can.

I think you can reasonably argue that, but (I'm guessing) that most people will disagree with you about the legitimacy of attempting to punish the USN by accosting unrelated merchant ships.

Iran fights U.S. interests in the Middle East. Its actions are not designed to punish the USN per se. The war is with the U.S., not its navy.

I always have to read your comments twice.

The first time often gives me the (implied) sense you are being deliberatively incendiary or unclear. The second read gives me a terse, narrow, balanced, unbiased and reasonable statement based on the strict (yet multiple) definitions of the words used.

It really is amazing.

I'm sorry, I don't follow. I know this is a lot of words responding to a short comment already, but I think you'd have to break this out further to make it legible to me. You're giving the comment more thought than I did writing it, for what it's worth.

Sure! and sorry, this is entirely meta and more critique than criticism, so feel free to ignore.

Your comments are, I have noticed, often terse but always very exacting. It is different to most other comments I read on this site, where the meaning is usually clearer than the language. With yours I find it is often the reverse. It seems that you mean only what you say, rather than saying only approximately what you mean, I guess (to butcher the phrase).

Anyway, this comment in particular was, I think, a good example and maybe worth drawing attention to.. as I often I find myself, (and others) 'reading in' a point of view not actually contained within your comment (perhaps implied, perhaps not). And I think maybe, the reason the comment is difficult to parse (conceptually) is it doesn't inscribe a morality or even ownership (which I believe the other commenter was responding to), even later where you make the point of view more explicit. And I can read literally the same words as implying a neutral, pro or anti stance, and the comment also still makes sense. It is unusual, and I often am left (on second read) with the sense maybe I really don't know your point of view at the end, but that also perhaps this doesn't always matter as once I discard the need for understanding any intended or implied meaning, I see what you definitely are saying is very clear.

Anyway, yes, way overthinking it, but I do enjoy reading your takes for this precise reason, though I just have to remind myself to read them carefully.

Doesn’t really matter. If the US Coast Guard really wants to board you, there are no warships coming to your defense.

The USCG hunts down drug runners in intentional waters all the time. They have snipers in helicopters who can take out the engines on speedboats. Once they are disabled, an armed boarding party from a ship collects the crew.

For larger ships, the US doesn’t need a messy show of force. We can politely ask a friendly nation to seize the ship and detain the crew in their waters. It’s all nice and legal.

If it’s just off the coast as in “territorial waters”, there’s the concept of innocent passage in international law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_passage) - although the US are not part of this UN convention. If the criteria for innocent passage are not met, “the coastal State may take the necessary steps in its territorial sea to prevent passage”.

Edit: I guess in more tricky situations e.g. the ship isn’t obviously armed or spying, it comes down to questions similar to probable cause.

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