US Navy patrol ship fires warning shots at Iran fast-attack boats

On Tuesday, four Iranian warships sped close to two US Navy guided missile destroyers with their weapons uncovered in the Strait of Hormuz in an “unsafe and unprofessional” encounter, according to the Pentagon. The USS Squall fired the three warning shots from their 50-caliber gun into the water just ahead of the approaching Iranian craft, at which point the Iranians turned and left. “The Iranian vessels were within 12,000 yards of Nitze and 5,000 yards of Tempest”, he added. After two of the Iranian boats came closer, the U.S. crew used its ship whistle and flares in an attempt to communicate with the Iranians, but those attempts were also ignored.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted Gen. Hosein Dehghan as saying that “if any foreign vessel enters our waters, we warn them, and if it’s an invasion, we confront”.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told the Associated Press that the incident with Nitze raised questions about what is the new normal in the volatile relationship with Iran.

Mr. Cook said he hoped the Iranian behavior would stop. “It’s very common for them to come up to within 300, 500 yards of us, and then they’ll turn, or parallel us and stop”, he said.

At first, three Iranian attack craft approached the U.S. ships – before one broke away, coming within 200 yards on Wednesday.

In video of the encounter recorded aboard the Nitze showed the warning flares fired from the ship as well as the audio warnings from the ship’s horn.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy was also responsible for the detention of 10 US sailors in January, 2016.

However, Cook said during a press briefing on 25 August that the USA patrol ship fired the three warning shots after “the crew determined that these Iranian craft coming at them were approaching at an unsafe and unprofessional manner”. Crews of USA boats were detained in January after their vessels veered into Iranian waters.

The Nitze was accompanied by another destroyer, the USS Mason.

Iran is sending a message to America’s allies in the Middle East: the U.S.is impotent and a paper tiger.

NAVCENT spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban noted there have been previous recent incidents with IRGCN vessels interfering with US Navy ships in the Gulf, but did not provide further details.

The Iranian ships “created a unsafe, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation, including additional defensive measures by Nitze”, an American defense official said of the earlier incident.

The incident occurred as the destroyer USS Nitze was travelling in the Strait of Hormuz, a USA defense official said on Wednesday.

A similar incident in January resulted in the arrest of 10 U.S. marines, who were quickly freed after urgent diplomatic negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his USA counterpart John Kerry.

Officials said an Iranian boat was speeding towards it head-on and came within 200 yards only to turn around when a second United States vessel nearby fired three warning shots. The crewmembers were released the next day after being held for about 15 hours.