The United States Navy forced the surrounding Middle Eastern countries to refuse docking rights to the Yinhe, leaving it in the international waters of the Indian Ocean for twenty-four days.[1] Despite eventually concluding that the cargo ship did not contain any precursors of chemical weapons, the U.S. government refused to apologize, stating that "the United States had acted in good faith on intelligence." American officials within the Clinton administration later accused China of deliberately spreading false intelligence in order to cause the incident, referring to it as a 'sting.'[2]