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By Andrew deGrandpre By Andrew deGrandpre July 25 at 7:04 PM

Officials say a U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots when an Iranian vessel in the Persian Gulf came within 150 yards on Tuesday, July 25. (Reuters)

A U.S. Navy patrol boat fired two bursts of machine-gun fire at an Iranian military ship Tuesday as it made an alarmingly fast and close approach in the Persian Gulf, marking the latest aggressive encounter between the two adversaries.

The unidentified Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel got within 150 yards of the USS Thunderbolt and risked a collision, U.S. officials said, before the American patrol boat fired warning shots and quickly ended the encounter.

One Pentagon official who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity described it as an isolated incident and confirmed that no one was hurt.

U.S. officials have not specified where the incident occurred, saying only that U.S. and coalition ships were participating in a daytime training exercise when the Iranians conducted an unsafe and unprofessional interaction by failing to observe internationally recognized maritime customs.

Its also unclear how many Americans were aboard the Thunderbolt. Based in Norfolk, it can carry a crew of 27 and is used primarily for patrolling coastlines and to provide surveillance for interdiction operations.

U.S. officials have not yet disclosed what type of weapons the crew fired, although the ship is armed with .50.-caliber machine guns and Mk 38 chain guns in addition toautomatic grenade launchers.

At least three other American vessels were nearby at the time.

Video released by the U.S. Central Command shows the Iranian vessel approaching the Thunderbolts starboard side, extremely close to the ships bow. An American sailor can be heard radioing the ships coordinates, and then the sound ofmachine-gun fire.

The Iranian vessel did not respond to repeated attempts to establish radio communications as it approached, said Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman. Thunderbolt then fired warning flares and sounded the internationally recognized danger signal of five short blasts on the ships whistle, but the Iranian vessel continued inbound. As the Iranian vessel proceeded toward the U.S. ship, Thunderbolt again sounded five short blasts before firing warning shots in front of the Iranian vessel.

Iranian military officials characterized the incident as a U.S. provocation and took credit for having neutralized the threat.

In a report published last winter, the Office of Naval Intelligence indicated that vessels operated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps routinely monitor U.S. and allied warships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, a busy waterway that links to the Gulf of Oman. The majority of these encounters are safe and routine, it said, but unprofessional or aggressive run-ins are becoming more frequent.

Such operations increase the likelihood for a mishap at sea, potentially leading to strategic tension and insecurity in the region, the report said.

The Pentagon documented 35 such interactions with Iranians last year, up from to 23 in 2015. This year, it has acknowledged at least five.

[Iranian navy points laser at Marine helicopter in altercation involving three U.S. ships]

Last month, Iranian forces harassed a formation of three American ships the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the guided-missile destroyer Cole and the dry cargo ship Washington Chambers shining floodlights on them from a distance of 800 yards and pointing a laser at an airborne U.S. helicopter.

Twice in March, the USNS Invincible, which is outfitted with sonar and radar equipment, had close encounters. In one incident, an Iranian frigate moved within 150 yards. In the other, Revolutionary Guard fast boats cut in front of the U.S. ship, forcing it to rapidly change course to avoid a collision.

Such adversarial behavior between the two nations navies comes amid whathas become a more complicated dynamic on the ground inside Iraq and Syria.

Speaking at a security forum in Colorado last week, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Army Gen. Raymond Thomas, acknowledged how American troops now routinely come coffee-breath close to Iranian-backed forces, according to CNN.

Last month in Syria, where fighters trained by Iran are supporting President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. forces shot down at least two armed Iranian drones near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

Thomas noted, too, that during one recent trip into northern Iraq, where Iranian trained militias are battling the Islamic State, his plane was parked beside one belonging to Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Irans infamous Quds Force.

We bump into them everywhere, he said.

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An Iranian ship refused to heed the Navy's warning. Then shots were fired. - Washington Post

An overwhelming majority of House lawmakers voted to pass a sweeping sanctions package Tuesday evening that threatens to tie President Trump's hands in negotiations with Russia, and also punishes two other rogue regimes: Iran and North Korea.

"This is a strong, bipartisan bill that will increase the United States' economic and political leverage," House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce said Tuesday just before the House passed the measure 419-3.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said after the vote that Congress has to take action against these "bad actors."

A bill that started out weeks ago as a vehicle for cracking down on Iranian belligerence turned into pack mule for lawmakers determined to guide U.S. foreign policy while navigating domestic politics. The Iran bill passed the Senate only after the addition of a Russia sanctions bill opposed by the Trump administration, before stalling in the House due to procedural fights.

When the dust settled, the bill was laden with a new batch of North Korea sanctions in addition to smaller tweaks.

"Our job isn't done obviously until we get this thing across the finish line. And we need to do that, because this bill is critical to our national security," New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, said Tuesday on the House floor. "It does far more than just send a message to leaders in Russia, Iran, and North Korea it exacts a heavy price for their aggressive and destabilizing behavior."

The House previously approved the North Korea bill as a stand-alone item in a 419-1 vote, but it has yet to be taken up in the Senate, which has been consumed with debates over how to repeal Obamacare as well as Trump's political appointments. "I hope we don't face further delays when this bill gets back to the other house," Engel said.

The Russia and Iran components of the bill have run into a series of snags already, chiefly due to procedural issues. The original version of the Senate-passed bill violated a constitutional requirement that all legislation which raises revenue must start in the House. Once that was fixed, lawmakers clashed over how much power Democrats should have to force votes on bills that would condemn various decisions Trump might make while implementing the Russia sanctions.

The Russia language is a rare addition for sanctions bills, in that it allows Congress to vote down decisions by the White House to waive sanctions against Russia. Democrats said that language was critical given their skepticism that President Trump would maintain sanctions against Russia.

For weeks, Democrats said resolutions disapproving of Trump's decision to waive sanctions should be able to be called up by any lawmaker, including Democrats in the House. But the final language will let House GOP leaders decide whether or when to call up those resolutions.

Lawmakers praised the final product as a way to address national security threats to the U.S.

"North Korea and Russia and Iran all pose serious threats to our national security," Royce said. "Successive administrations have struggled and failed to address them, and it is well past time to respond with meaningful action."

Trump's team lobbied against the Russia sanctions as written, saying that Congress should give him more discretion when negotiating to improve relations with the former Cold War rival. But Congress has ignored those appeals, leaving them with a choice about vetoing or allowing the bill made all the more difficult by the fact that the Russia-related provisions are tied to Iran and North Korea sanctions.

"He's going to study that legislation and see what the final product looks like," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday.

House passage sends the bill to the Senate, which is expected to approve it by a wide margin. The Senate approved the Russia and Iran language in a 98-2 vote, and passage by another veto-proof majority would force the Trump White House to accept the bill as is.

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House passes sweeping sanctions bill punishing Russia, Iran, and North Korea - Washington Examiner

Saying his family is desperate, Bob Levinsons son begged Congress to do anything, do something to bring home the Coral Springs man missing in Iran for more than 10 years.

Bob Levinson, a former FBI agent and CIA spy, is the longest-held civilian hostage in U.S. history.

His son, Doug, was only 13 when his father was taken hostage. He sent him an email in the days that followed: Everyone is looking for you. Please come back home. Please respond back. Im so scared.

Now 23, Doug Levinson wore a pair of his fathers still-too-big shoes at a House Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

His father had two jobs: taking care of his wife and seven children and protecting the U.S. by putting away the bad guys, Doug Levinson testified.

His voice rose when he said each administration has failed his family as other hostages in Iran have been freed.

We need action, Doug Levinson urged. Please be relentless in pursuing all options. Please do not let Iran off the hook. Theyve been allowed to do whatever they want because there are no consequences.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said Congress would continue to ask questions about what our government is doing to bring your family members back home.

Levinsons family met with State Department officials last week, according to The Associated Press.

The White House is threatening new and serious consequences for Iran unless it releases all U.S. citizens who are detained there.

The White House says President Donald Trump is prepared to act in an attempt to end Iran's practice of using detentions and hostage taking as state policy.

Doug Levinson said his family is optimistic and that Trump has used the strongest language theyve heard from three presidents.

As a candidate in 2015, Trump vowed to bring Levinson home, and the Levinson family has asked to meet with him in hopes he will take a more aggressive stance toward getting answers than President Barack Obama did.

Iran has made it a practice to take American citizens and legal permanent residents as hostages in an effort to exact political and financial concessions, Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement before the hearing.

Iran denies holding Levinson, who disappeared in 2007. His family, who has gone to Iran twice to look for him, hasn't received evidence he's still alive for years. The U.S. government is at a loss how to find him.

Iran has flip-flopped from asking What he was doing there to denying he was ever there at all, said Doug Levinson.

Bob Levinson was a contractor for the CIA who flew to Irans resort island to meet with an American fugitive he hoped to cultivate as an informant.

Initially, the U.S. publicly insisted Levinson went to Iran as a private investigator working a cigarette smuggling case. Eventually it led to a scandal within the CIA in which three agency officials lost their jobs for using him as part of an unauthorized spying operation. The agency paid $2.25 million to Levinsons wife.

She sat behind her son Doug at Tuesdays hearing, next to another son, Dan.

Josh Lederman, Associated Press

Relatives of two other men held in Iran also spoke at the hearing.

In October, Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American businessman, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for collaborating with a foreign government.

Five other defendants were convicted and given similar sentences, including Namazis father, Baquer, who is also a dual citizen.

The prosecutor also named Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese information technology expert who holds a green card granting him residence in the United States, and said each of the men had been imprisoned for espionage and collaboration with the American government.

Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, told the families not one of us can imagine what they are going through.

Iran knows how to find [Levinson] and they know how to get him home, Deutch said. We will not stop until the families are home.

Ros-Lehtinen said others have been detained, including one earlier this month for unknown reasons. And she said Tuesday that Iran will do it again, saying Iran does not respect human rights or law.

She called for intense and concerted effort because this is a problem that is not going away on it's own.

The House voted 419-3 to impose new sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea.

On Wednesday, the House will consider a resolution calling for the release of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents being held for political purposes by Iran. The resolution also encourages the President to take meaningful action to secure the return of Robert Levinson if the Government of Iran does not locate and return him.

Doug Levinson had one more message for his father: Dad, were never going to stop fighting to get you home. Were doing everything we possibly can every single day. ... Please stay strong. Were going to get you home.

lhuriash@sunsentinel.com, 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash

Continued here:
Son of Coral Springs spy held in Iran to testify Tuesday - Sun Sentinel - Sun Sentinel

Chinese J-10 fighter jets like the ones that intercepted a U.S. surveillance plane last weekend.

AFP/Getty Images

As if there werent enough alarming news to pay attention to between the impending vote on the future of American health care and a possible looming constitutional crisis, things are getting a little tense on the military front in multiple theaters around the world.

Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs.

U.S. officials said on Monday that two Chinese jets had intercepted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane above the East China Sea on Sunday, coming close enough to force the American plane to change direction. After the incident, Chinas defense ministry said that U.S. surveillance activity in the area threatens China's national security, harms Sino-U.S. maritime and air military safety, endangers the personal safety of both sides' pilots and is the root cause of unexpected incidents.

These interceptions have happened before, but tensions are particularly high at the moment. The U.S. Navy recently sailed a destroyer close to a disputed island in the South China Sea in order to assert freedom of navigation rights in an area of the sea claimed by Beijing. The Trump administration is also preparing sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals for doing business with North Korea while the president has apparently now decided that China isnt doing enough to pressure the country to give up its nuclear program. China, meanwhile, continues to object to the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system in South Korea, which the U.S. plans to test again soon.

So thats China. Then theres Iran.

On Tuesday, a U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots at an Iranian patrol boat, believed to have been operated by the countrys Revolutionary Guard, after it came within 150 yard of the U.S. ships. Things are even testier than normal in the Gulf due to the ongoing blockade of Qatar by several of its neighbors, in part due to its friendly relationship with Iran. The U.S. position on that crisis has been a bit muddled, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson staying neutral at the same time President Trump has fully supported the blockade.

U.S.-Iranian relations continue to deteriorate: An American student was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran for spying while the U.S. congress is preparing new sanctions to punish Iran for its ballistic missile tests.

While both the China and Iran incidents ended without any loss of life or major damage, they are the sort of thing that can easily lead to much larger and more dangerous confrontations. Now back to the tweets.

See the rest here:
In Other News, US Military Has Close Calls With Iran and China - Slate Magazine (blog)

In Hong Kong, a proposal to lease part of a new rail terminal to China and to allow Chinese officers to enforce mainland law there has raised concerns about the erosion of the one country, two systems model.

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Chinas embattled human rights lawyers are the focus of a New York Times Magazine report.

Lawyers for dissidents often face a terrible choice: acquiescence or imprisonment.

We know we cant win. We cant do anything to make our clients not guilty, said a human rights lawyer, above.

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Even more surreal than Id expected.

Last week, the U.S. barred Americans from traveling to North Korea, after the death of a college student who was detained in the country for 17 months.

We asked readers who had traveled there to tell us why they went and what they found. Here is a sampling of the responses we received.

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Cardinal George Pell, one of the popes top advisers, above, is expected to make his first court appearance in Australia after becoming the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate to be formally charged with sexual offenses.

The still-unspecified charges followed years of criticism that he had at best overlooked, and at worst covered up, the widespread abuse of children by clergymen in Australia.

Cardinal Pell has vowed to fight the charges, calling them false and the result of a relentless character assassination.

_____

Michael Kors bought Jimmy Choo for about $1.2 billion. Our columnist examines whether the shoe fits and if the deal risks taking the luxury footwear brand down-market.

HNA Group, the Chinese conglomerate, tried to allay concerns about its ownership structure by releasing details of its largest shareholder a private investor who recently donated his 30 percent stake to the companys charity arm in New York.

Employees at a U.S. tech company are volunteering to have microchips injected between their thumb and index finger, making it easier to open doors and pay for food.

Tech report cards: Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported $26 billion in revenue. Facebook announces earnings today, Amazon and Twitter on Thursday.

U.S. stocks were higher. Heres a snapshot of global markets.

New footage of a gunfight that left three Americans dead near a military base in Jordan shows a deliberate attack that was initially explained as a mistake. [The New York Times]

At least 12 people were killed when a five-story building collapsed in a suburb of Mumbai. A rescue operation is underway to dig out people trapped in the debris. [The New York Times]

The Pentagon said a U.S. Navy spy plane took evasive action to avoid crashing into a Chinese fighter jet in contested skies above the East China Sea on Sunday. [The New York Times]

In Myanmar, two people died this week of swine flu (H1N1), bringing the total fatalities to three just days after 13 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus. [The Irrawaddy]

The governor of Okinawa filed another lawsuit against the Japanese government to halt the relocation of a U.S. military base in his prefecture. [The Asahi Shimbun]

Cambodias first national figure skating team trains at a public ice rink on top of a shopping mall. [Southeast Asia Globe]

India, Indonesia and Japan are among the few countries where companies offer women paid time off for period pain. Some experts fear these policies reinforce dated stereotypes. [The New York Times]

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Smugglers are finding creative ways to get drugs into the U.S. through Mexico as the United States increases the number of agents, drones, sensors and cameras patrolling the border.

We documented the work of Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist who examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players. She found that 110 were found to have C.T.E., the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head.

And our Game of Thrones newsletter examines Melisandres prophecy, explains why there are two characters named Nymeria and points out the internets best articles on the most recent episode.

War in a periscope declared the front page of The Times on this day in 1942.

The headline accompanied a photo from the U.S. Navy, the first combat action photograph taken through the periscope of an American undersea craft.

That got us wondering about other photographic firsts at The Times, so we dove into our archives.

The Times published its first photographs on Sept. 6, 1896, in the first edition of its Sunday Magazine. (The pictures were of two of the candidates in the 1860 presidential election. Photos of white, male politicians? Some things never change.)

It took another 13 years for a photo to finally appear on the front page. The Times sponsored a daredevil flight from Albany to New York City and ran a picture of the plane at takeoff.

We experimented with printing in color as far back as the early 20th century, but the front page was strictly black and white until Oct. 16, 1997, when a photo of the World Series-bound Cleveland Indians appeared.

Interested in more photos from The Timess archive? Check out our blog, The Lively Morgue, and follow @nytarchives on Instagram.

Chris Stanford and Ryan Murphy contributed reporting.

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Correction: An earlier version of todays briefing misstated the frequency of the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree. It is quadrennial.

We have briefings timed for the Australian, European and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.

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Jeff Sessions, North Korea, Iran: Your Morning Briefing - New York Times