Well, apart from the fact that the Iran-Iraq war had been on right there for eight years, there's all this on the referred Wikipedia page, including the fact that the Vincennes was actually in Iranian territorial waters at the time:
> The Flight 655 incident occurred a year after the USS Stark incident, during which the Iraqi Air Force attacked the U.S. Navy guided missile frigate USS Stark on 17 May 1987, killing 37 American sailors.
> U.S. naval forces had also exchanged gunfire with Iranian gunboats in late 1987, and the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts had struck an Iranian sea mine in April 1988.
> Two months before the incident, the U.S. had engaged in Operation Praying Mantis, resulting in the sinkings of the Iranian frigate Sahand, the Iranian fast attack craft Joshan, and three Iranian speedboats.
> Also, the Iranian frigate Sabalan was crippled, two Iranian platforms were destroyed, and an Iranian fighter was damaged. A total of at least 56 Iranian crew were killed, while the U.S. suffered the loss of only one helicopter, which crashed apparently by accident, killing its two pilots.
> On the morning of 3 July 1988, USS Vincennes was passing through the Strait of Hormuz returning from an escort duty. A helicopter deployed from the cruiser reportedly received small arms fire from Iranian patrol vessels as it observed from high altitude. Vincennes moved to engage the Iranian vessels, in the course of which they all violated Omani waters and left after being challenged and ordered to leave by a Royal Navy of Oman warship.
> Vincennes then pursued the Iranian gunboats, entering Iranian territorial waters.
So yeah, you are right, there was no actual war. But everyone was pretty war-ish
Wikipedia says "The attack occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, which had been continuing for nearly eight years." I guess it wasn't supposed to be a war that the US was involved in directly? But they were apparently getting their helicopter shot at and were doing things in Iranian territorial waters, so I guess they weren't just hanging out.
