Business Insider reports that Cutters Wrangell and Monomoy were harassed for three hours by units of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Three IRGC fast-attack boats and a larger support vessel swarmed the US Coast Guard cutters Monomoy and Wrangell while they were on patrol in international waters on April 2.”

Sounds like the IRGC units may have been operating without government authority and attempting to create an incident.

The IRGC is a bit like Nazi Germany’s Waffen SS or China’s People’s Liberation Army, in that it is not a national armed force. It is an armed force of a political faction.

It was almost exactly a year earlier when the last such incident occurred. This time there were fewer Iranian units and they do not seem to have acted quite as aggressively.

This was more than three weeks ago and we are only hearing about it now. No photos or videos of the incident accompanied the story. It is always a good idea to get video–I am willing to bet photos and videos exist, but for some reason they were were not made public. Perhaps for the same reason it took three weeks for the news to surface.