US destroyer fires warning shots at Iranian patrol boats
By
Peter Symonds
10 January 2017
A US guided missile destroyer fired warning shots at Iranian patrol boats on Sunday, which, US defence officials claimed, engaged in “harassing” behaviour. The incident underscores the volatile situation in the Middle East and the potential for a rapid rise of US-Iranian tensions once Donald Trump assumes the US presidency.
According to the Pentagon’s account, the USS Mahan fired three warning shots from a .50-caliber machine gun at four Iranian boats after attempting to warn them off via radio, siren, ship’s whistle and flares. At least one of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) vessels reportedly came within a kilometre of the US destroyer, which was transiting the Gulf of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf with two other US Navy ships—the amphibious craft USS Makin Island and the oiler, USNS Walter S. Diehl.
Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis branded the encounter as “unsafe and unprofessional.” He alleged that Iranian boats ignored warnings and approached the USS Mahan at high speed with weapons manned. He did acknowledge that the incident was “somewhat out of character” for Iran recently, saying there were 23 such “unsafe and unprofessional” incidents involving Iran in 2015 and 35 in 2016, mostly in the first half of the year. The last time that a US warship fired warning shots at IRGC vessels was last August.
Iranian authorities have yet to comment on the latest incident.
It is possible that the IRGC, which is supported by hard-line factions of the Iranian regime, staged a show of force ahead of a parliamentary session on Monday that approved increases to military spending, including for the development of long-range ballistic missiles. The US and its…