Four Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels sped close to a U.S. guided missile destroyer in global waters Tuesday in an “unsafe and unprofessional” encounter, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.
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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.
After a brief radio exchange, the Iranians refused to leave, CNN reported, forcing the USA ships to follow defensive maritime procedures and fire three warning shots at the Iranian vessel.
“Ultimately, Squall resorted to firing three warning shots from their.50-caliber gun, which caused the Iranian vessel to turn away”, he added. Bill Urban told Navy Times, escalating to three warning shots fired, as Iranian paramilitaries seek more confrontations in the Persian Gulf.
Over the previous year and a half, almost 10 percent of Iran’s interactions with the U.S. Navy were deemed unsafe or unprofessional, Urban said, adding that all maritime nations should “act in a professional manner in accordance with worldwide law”.
“The Iranian high rate of closure on a United States ship operating in accordance with global law while transiting in worldwide waters along with the disregard of multiple warning attempts created a unsafe, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation including additional defensive measures by Nitze”, Urban said in a statement. Iran held the sailors overnight before releasing them in an embarrassing incident for the Navy that led to disciplinary action for several servicemembers involved.
The four IRGC vessels approached at high speed. Dehghan claimed that the U.S. ships were in Iranian waters and his naval forces have been ordered to warn or confront any foreign ship that entered the country’s territory.
Urban said that the Navy’s Central Command “assessed all of these interactions as unsafe and unprofessional due to the Iranian vessels not abiding by global law and maritime standards, including the 1972 Convention on the worldwide Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) maritime ‘Rules of the Road'”. The U.S. Navy called the move, “unsafe and unprofessional”.
“We will monitor them and, if they violate our waters, we will confront them”, he said in a statement reported by the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
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Earlier, U.S. Adm. John Richardson said the incident involving the Nitze reflects the greater competition the U.S.is facing at sea and underscores the naval tensions with Tehran, which include other similar incidents. U.S. officials say the Iranians were acting in an unprofessional and unsafe manner in that instance as well. Both encounters are reminiscent of an instance in January in which two US Navy patrol vessels drifted into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf.
