U.S. Navy ship fires warning shots at Iranian vessel |
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- A U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots toward an Iranian fast-attack
craft that approached two U.S. ships, a Pentagon spokesman said on
Thursday, in the most serious of a number of incidents in the Gulf
area this week.
"They did feel
compelled ultimately to fire three warning shots and the reason for
that is... they had taken steps already to try and de-escalate this
situation," spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.
Tensions have
increased in the Gulf in recent days despite an improvement in
relations between Iran and the United States.
Years of mutual
animosity eased when Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran in January
after a deal to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions but serious differences
still remain over Iran's ballistic missile program, Syria and Iraq.
A U.S. defense
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the USS Squall
patrol craft fired three warning shots from a .50 caliber gun in the
northern Gulf on Wednesday after warning flares did not work.
The incident started
with three Iranian vessels, but there was only one around by the time
the warning shots were fired, the official said. He described the
Iranian behavior as "unsafe, unprofessional, and not routine."
At one point, the
Iranian vessel came within 200 yards (193 meters) of a U.S. ship, the
official said.
Another interaction
took place between an Iranian and U.S. ship on Wednesday, the defense
official said but gave few more details.
The Pentagon earlier
this week accused Iranian vessels of harassing a U.S. warship near
the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.
On Thursday, Iran's
defense minister said those Iranian vessels were just doing their
job.
“If an American
ship enters Iran’s maritime region, it will definitely get a
warning. We will monitor them and, if they violate our waters, we
will confront them,” Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said in a
statement reported by the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
A State Department
spokeswoman said it was not clear what the intentions of the Iranian
ships were, but the behavior was unacceptable.
"We believe
that these type of actions are of concern, they unnecessarily
escalate tensions," State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth
Trudeau told a briefing.
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