Official: US Navy ship fires warning shots at Iranian boatsBy Barbara Starr and Joe Sterling, CNN Updated 2:43 PM ET, Mon January 9, 2017 (CNN)A US Navy ship fired warning shots at Iranian boats on Sunday near the Strait of Hormuz, US Defense officials said Monday.
Five Iranian vessels approached the
USS Mahan and two other US ships that were entering the
strait, according to accounts from four sources. The Strait
of Hormuz is situated between the Gulf of Oman and the
Persian Gulf.
The Mahan, a destroyer, fired warning shots and used radio
calls, flares, bells and whistles to signal to the ships to
stay away. There was no response to the radio calls. A US
helicopter overhead dropped smoke grenades.
Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the boats came
"within 900 yards or so" of the Mahan.
"It's somewhat out of character, recently anyway, from what
we've seen out of Iran," Davis said.
Referring to other similar encounters, Davis said there
had been "a total of 35 in 2016 that were assessed to be
unsafe and unprofessional," and he added that "the vast
majority of those were in the first half of 2016."
"We had a significant number of these before, they had
largely stopped except, you know, this incident and in
August seemed to be one-offs," he continued.
Warning shots were fired in that August incident, too.
The incident began with a routine shadowing by one
regular Iranian navy ship as the Mahan; the
USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship; and
the
USNS Walter Diehl, a replenishment oiler, began to
enter the strait toward the Persian Gulf.
Four small inshore attack crafts began harassing the US
ships, with six separate approaches by the Iranians over
a nine-hour period, essentially the whole period of the
transit, sources said.
Only one approach was deemed unprofessional, and that
resulted in the firing of warning shots because they
approached Mahan at a high speed.
The approach was at 15 to 20 knots and if not stopped at
a distance of 500 yards or more could have been
dangerous for the US ship, the sources said. As a
result, defensive measures were taken.
During the interaction, Iran put up a small unmanned
aerial vehicle.
Cmdr. Bill Urban with U.S. Naval Forces Central Command
said the Mahan established radio communications with the
four crafts from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps Navy and "issued multiple radio and visual
warnings to remain clear."
He said the vessels sloughed off the warnings and
"continued to directly approach Mahan at a high rate of
speed," prompting "three warning shots with a
crew-served .50-caliber machine gun."
The ships then "arrested their high-speed approach,"
Urban said.
Naval Forces Central Command regards the interaction "as
unsafe and unprofessional" because of their "high-speed
approach on Mahan with weapons manned."
The command cited the vessels' disregard for repeated
warnings via radio, audible siren, and ships' whistle.
The incident is the latest tense encounter between the
two countries in and over waters near Iran in recent
months. These brushes have included Iranian rocket
launches, drones flying over US vessels and
the capture of US sailors.
They've come against the backdrop of renewed US
diplomatic contacts with Iran, which has triggered a
political backlash among Iranian hardliners, including
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In November, a
US Navy Seahawk helicopter had what the Navy is
calling an "unsafe and unprofessional encounter" with an
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps patrol boat near the
Strait of Hormuz.
The helicopter was flying overhead when the Iranians
trained a weapon on it, according to a defense official.
The Iranians did not fire. The event took place as the
helicopter was escorting the aircraft carrier USS Dwight
D. Eisenhower on its way out of the Persian Gulf.
In September, Iran threatened to shoot down two US
Navy aircraft as they were flying just inside the
strait, a US defense official said. The EP-3 and P-8
planes were in international airspace but "near Iranian
airspace."
Earlier in September,
seven Iranian fast-attack boats were involved in an
unsafe encounter with the USS Firebolt, with one Iranian
craft coming to a stop in front of the American ship, a
US defense official said.
In
August, US Navy patrol craft fired three warning
shots at an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps boat after
US officials said it had harassed that patrol craft.
Another US patrol craft and a Kuwaiti Navy ship were
also harassed in the incident, which took place in the
northern end of the Persian Gulf.
CNN's Mike Callahan and Ryan Browne contributed to this report http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/09/politics/us-iran-warning-shots/ |