Iran has not commented on the incident in the Persian Gulf, the first such meeting since last April.
US and Iranian warships had a tense encounter in Gulf waters earlier this month, the first such incident in about a year amid wider unrest in the region over the nuclear deal. tattered area of Tehran, the U.S. Navy said on Tuesday.
Images – dated April 2 – released by the Navy showed an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-commanded vessel cut off in front of USCGC Monomoy, causing the then-US Coast Guard vessel to come to a screeching halt. that his engine was smoking.
The IRGC did the same with another Coast Guard vessel, USCGC Wrangell, said Commander Rebecca Rebarich, spokesperson for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet based in the Middle East.
Iran did not immediately recognize the incident, which resulted in no injuries or damage.
“The American crews issued several deck-to-deck radio warnings, five brief explosions from the horns of the ships, and while the (Iranian) Harth 55 responded to the deck-to-deck radio requests, they continued the dangerous maneuvers,” said Rebarich.
“After about three hours of warning and defensive maneuvering by the United States, the (Iranian) ships moved away from the American ships and opened the distance between them,” Rebariach added.
“ Dangerous and unprofessional ” incident
The interaction marked the first “dangerous and unprofessional” incident involving Iran since April 15, 2020, Rebarich said.
Iran had largely ended such incidents in 2018 and most of 2019, she said.
In 2017, the US Navy recorded 14 cases of what it describes as “dangerous and / or unprofessional” interactions with Iranian forces. He recorded 35 in 2016 and 23 in 2015.
Incidents at sea almost always involve the IRGC, which reports solely to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
During the weekend, leaked recordings have surfaced in which Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was heard to say that the IRGC has often sabotaged Tehran’s efforts, with IRGC-led ‘field operations’ never budging to give way to diplomacy, even as Iran was in talks that ultimately led to its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that lifted multilateral sanctions.
They include a 2016 incident in which Iranian forces captured and held overnight 10 American sailors who got lost in Iranian territorial waters.
The incident comes as Iran negotiates with world powers in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal from which former US President Donald Trump withdrew and reimposed sanctions against Iran.
