January 12, 2008 (LPAC)--U.S. Naval commanders in the Persian Gulf have, for some time, been seeking an "incidents-at-sea" agreement with Iran in order to prevent the kind of encounter that Fox News' boys want to occur, which would escalate into a more serious confrontation. Columnist Jim Lobe reported on his blog, yesterday, that Admiral William Fallon, the commander of U.S. Central Command, has been pressing the White House--without success--for such an agreement "that would reduce the risk of an accidental confrontation in the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf, itself." Lobe recalls that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported, back on Sept. 16, 2007, that an unexpected opportunity for a discussion appeared just a few days before, when Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, U.S. 5th Fleet commander, appeared on a panel with the brother of the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "This chance encounter at a Geneva meeting of the International Institute for Strategic Studies should be pursued," Ignatius wrote at the time.

Similiar agreements existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and provided procedures and radio channels so that when military forces of the two sides encountered each other in international waters and airspace so that accidental war could be avoided. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, a professor of international relations and the author of several books on Iran, added, in a column in the Dec. 21 Asia Times, that such an agreement between the U.S. and Iran "may help set relations between the two countries on the right track, off the path to confrontation, and in line with the provisions of international law."