Iran escalated its harassment of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard on Monday with a violation of international norms, steering 13 fast-attack boats at a U.S. Navy and Coast Guard formation at high speeds until warning shots ended the encounter.
A Navy video of the encounter shows the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia traveling on the surface and escorted by six Navy and Coast Guard vessels as Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy ships flank both sides, their machine guns uncovered and manned. American helicopters hover overhead as the American ships transit international waters in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Pentagon reported the Navy first attempted to warn the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval vessels of the unsafe maneuver with horn blasts, then bridge-to-bridge communication. When the unsafe maneuvers continued, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Maui fired 30 warning shots in two volleys from a .50 caliber gun, the first at 300 yards and the second at 150 yards.
“The IRGCN vessels came within 150 yards of Maui at high speed, an unnecessarily close range that put the ships and their crews in immediate danger,” U.S. Fifth Fleet said in a statement.
Two Iranian vessels that broke off and closed in on the Maui and patrol coastal ship USS Squall “increased the risk of miscalculation and collision,” according to the statement.
The IRGC navy dispersed after the second round of warning shots was fired.
“Sadly, harassment by the IRGC Navy is not a new phenomena. It is something that all our commanding officers and the crews of our vessels are trained for,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
“It’s certainly more than we’ve seen in recent past,” he added. “It’s significant.”
Kirby declined to discuss the Navy’s rules of engagement and under what conditions the Navy would be authorized to sink threatening Iranian ships.
The United States and Iran are currently in the midst of negotiations that could end U.S. sanctions in return for Tehran returning to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal, from which the U.S. exited in 2018 under former President Donald Trump.
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Iran experts have worried that time is short for such negotiation as a new hard-line government is expected to win June elections there and could further increase tensions with the U.S.
The length of time of the latest naval incident between the U.S. and Iran has not yet been made public.
