US, Iran navies butt heads in Arabian Gulf

The United States and Iran have exchanged accusations, contradicting each other, on who was to blame for an incident that occurred last Saturday near the Strait of Hormuz in the Arabian Gulf.

A US Navy ship changed course towards Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, a guard commander was quoted as saying today to state media while issuing threats to the US.

A US official had originally told Reuters on Monday that multiple fast-attack vessels from the IRGC’s own navy, separate to Iran’s main navy, had come within 600 yards (550 metres) of the USNS Invincible, a tracking ship, forcing it to change direction.

Read: Iran holds naval war games amid rising tensions with US

But IRGC commander Mehdi Hashemi said the incident, the first of note between the countries’ navies in those waters since January, was the fault of the US ship, telling the state-sponsored Fars news agency: “The unprofessional actions of the Americans can have irreversible consequences.”

Years of mutual animosity eased when Washington, under former President Barack Obama, lifted sanctions on Tehran last year after a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions that would likely involve the development of atomic weapons. But major differences remain over Iran’s ballistic missile programme and conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, without referring to the Hormuz incident, also threatened the United States earlier today.

“If Iran’s ignorant enemies think about invading Iran they should know that our armed forces are much stronger than 1980 when Iraq attacked”

Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state TV.

Rouhani was referring to the Iran-Iraq War that lasted for eight years, with then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini being forced to sign a humiliating ceasefire deal with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the back of the Iranian military was broken in a series of Iraqi military offensives in 1987-88.

While still a US presidential candidate in September, Donald Trump vowed that any Iranian vessels that harassed the US Navy in the Gulf would be “shot out of the water.”

Read: Iran ready to give US ‘slap in the face’

Trump’s administration said on Tuesday it would show “great strictness” over restrictions on Iran’s activities under the nuclear deal with major powers, but gave little indication of what that might mean.

The last serious naval incident was in January when a US destroyer fired three warning shots at four Iranian fast-attack vessels near the Strait after they closed in at high speed and disregarded repeated requests to slow down.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in Washington on Monday that dangerous interactions were of concern because they could lead to a “miscalculation or an accidental provocation.”

“We actually had seen quite an improvement in Iran’s behaviour until recently,” he said, indicating Iran’s attempts at gunboat diplomacy had not gone unnoticed in the Pentagon.