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Iran has purchased a super-advanced speedboat and is going to use it to sink an American warship in the Persian Gulf!
Well, we don’t know for sure that they’re using it to sink an American warship, but they’re definitely up to something. Actually, there’s not even any evidence that the boat is for military purposes; or that it was purchased by the Revolutionary Guards; or that it’s even all that much faster than other boats…
But still, someone in Iran bought a really fast boat, so everyone should be afraid; be very afraid!
That about sums up this tabloid-esque story that ran in the Financial Times Sunday, and then was reprinted in the Washington Post alongside a completely unrelated yet sufficiently eerie photo of a tanker ship that ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef of all places.

Has a record-breaking British powerboat become the “ultimate toy” for an Iranian playboy or – as US investigators fear – is it now equipped with the world’s fastest torpedoes aimed at sinking an aircraft carrier in the Gulf?
In spite of efforts by the Obama administration to stop it falling into the hands of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Bradstone Challenger – a high-performance powerboat built with support from a US defence contractor – is believed to be under new and dangerous ownership.

Aside from a brief mention of US officials trying to prevent the sale of the boat, it is unknown who in Iran actually purchased it.   Nor is there any evidence to suggest that this boat gives Iran some vastly superior capability for carrying out some nefarious plan that it might have. 
The boat’s claim to fame was that it broke the record for circumnavigating Great Britain.  It’s not the world’s fastest boat, nor does it have high-tech stealth capabilities, or anything else of great military use for that matter.  No, this is the boating equivalent of a 1500 meter gold medalist. 
But still, it’s fast.  So obviously Iran is going to put a torpedo on it and ram it into something, right?  We all remember the speedboat incident from 2008, so that’s obviously what this is about too, right?
Well, the FT doesn’t really give any evidence for that either, nor do they actually take the time to explain why Iran thinks a torpedo would be more successful strapped to the front of a 51 foot boat than if it were actually fired from underwater, as torpedos are intended. 
But I guess the editors at the Financial Times and the Washington Post assume that if they put the word “Iran” next to enough scary-sounding speculation about some military capability or other, then everyone will just accept it as fact.  After all, it worked with the nuclear program, right?

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