Iran Denies It Fired Rockets Near US Warships In Gulf

Iran denied on Thursday that its Revolutionary Guards launched rockets near the USA aircraft-carrier Harry S. Truman and other warships as they were entering the Gulf on Saturday.

Navy officials immediately called the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy action “provocative and unsafe”, adding that the U.S. Navy did not have sufficient prior warning of an Iranian live-fire exercise in the area.

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

One day after the US announced that an Iranian rocket had landed within 1,500 yards of an American aircraft carrier, officials said the government is preparing new sanctions against Iran over its missile program.

The first incident was in October of 2014, when a Navy Sea Hawk helicopter assigned to the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, observed Iranian Navy vessels launching unguided rockets within eight nautical miles of the carrier strike group.

Raines said Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels offered “only 23 minutes of advance notification”.

Back in May, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei underlined that security of the Persian Gulf region comes within the purview of the regional countries alone, and dismissed the U.S. claim of seeking security in the region. Kyle Raines, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said the missile test happened Saturday.

Earlier, a total of 11 tons of low-enriched uranium has been shipped to Russian Federation from Iran while Norway has helped verify a shipment of 60 tons of raw uranium to Iran, as part of the nuclear deal.

Since this summer’s nuclear deal, Iran has tested missiles, another mover criticized by USA officials.

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”.

Diplomats have held out hope that the deal over Iran’s disputed nuclear program could ease decades of mistrust and reduce tensions in the Middle East. Taraghi has long expressed the view that the nuclear deal did not signal a transformation of the long-strained relations between the United States and Iran.