US Navy says planes threatened by Iran in Strait of Hormuz

Iran over the weekend reportedly threatened to shoot down two USA military surveillance aircraft operating in the Persian Gulf near the Islamic Republic.

The aircrafts were flying in worldwide airspace but “near Iranian airspace”.

A Navy P-8 Poseidon, with nine crew members, and a Navy EP-3 Eries, with about two dozen on board, were in global airspace on Saturday but “near Iranian airspace”, the official told CNN. “Yesterday he had a plane 10 feet away, taunting us, toying with us, just like Iran”, he said.

It was the fifth incident that the Pentagon claimed has happened in the past month, with USA military increasingly criticizing the Iranian military for its actions in the Persian Gulf. Another official said the incident was not considered “unsafe” because there were no Iranian missile launchers in the area, according to the latest intelligence reports.

On Sept. 4, a U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after a fast-attack craft from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps came within 100 yards (91 meters) in the central Gulf, at least the fourth such incident in less than a month.

Think others should know about this?

This is the latest in a series of recent altercations between the United States and Iran.

Leaders of the IRGC, which practices some level of autonomy independent of Tehran’s chain of command, have publicly questioned whether the USA would confront Iran militarily.

The official said the Iranian behavior was characterized as “unprofessional”.

Mentioning aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis’s (CVN-74) recent deployment to the Indo-Pacific region, in which PLAN frigates and spy ships shadowed the Stennis Carrier Strike Group for most of the deployment, Richardson said that each encounter between an American and Chinese ship was “performed according to a rule set that had been established by this CUES effort, Code for Unplanned Encounters At Sea”.

“This is principally the regime leadership trying to exert their influence and authority in the region”.

According to officials the September 10 warning was issued as both planes flew on a reconnaissance mission 13 miles off the coast of Iran, in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman.

In January, the Iranian navy briefly captured the crews of two United States patrol boats that had, through a series of blunders, strayed into Iranian territorial waters.