Iran tests rockets in the Strait of Hormuz

However, Gen. Sharif said that the rumors about testing rocket close to the United States warships are psychological warfare.

The US on Wednesday accused Iran of launching a “highly provocative” rocket test last week near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The USS Truman Carrier Strike Group, which consists of a carrier air wing, Navy cruiser and four Navy destroyers – was traveling alongside commercial vessels and a partner French Frigate, the Friendship Provenance.

In Washington, Commander Kyle Raines said the action was “highly provocative, unsafe and unprofessional”.

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that provides passage for almost a third of all oil traded by sea.

That came on the heels of skirmishes that led the U.S. Navy to sink six Iranian vessels and the disabling of the USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine.

According to the Pentagon, the USS Harry S. Truman was operating in an “internationally recognized maritime traffic lane” when Iran’s navy conducted their exercise.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the usa was preparing fresh sanctions against companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates over alleged links to the Islamic republic’s ballistic missile program.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said here on Thursday that his countyr will respond to any new USA sanctions and interfering measures over its defensive missile program.

Iranian and USA forces have clashed in the Gulf in the past, especially during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Such rockets might corkscrew out of control, threatening nearby ships, or US intelligence could mistakenly conclude USA vessels were under attack.

The fleet wasn’t in Iranian waters at the time, and there is no evidence the troops were targeted.

The semiofficial Tabnak news agency in Iran quoted an unnamed official as saying that the rockets had been fired to warn the Truman away from “a forbidden zone” in the Persian Gulf in keeping with “normal procedure”.

Later, Iran’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan said the Emad missile was “totally conventional”, dismissing a United Nations experts’ report in December that Iran violated the UN Security Council Resolution 1929 by test-firing the Emad missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.