Carrier enters Persian Gulf after long absence Bahrain

A US aircraft carrier sailed into the Persian Gulf yesterday, the first since America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May, and breaking the longest carrier absence in the volatile region since at least the 9/11 terror attacks.

The arrival of the USS John C Stennis comes as Iranian officials have returned to repeatedly threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels shadowed the Stennis and its strike group, at one point launching rockets away from it and flying a drone nearby.

‘‘We are trying to be more operationally unpredictable,’’ said Lieutenant Chloe Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Bahrainbased US 5th Fleet. ‘‘Now we’re switching it up because our adversaries are watching closely.’’

Despite being narrow and within the territorial waters of Iran and Oman, the Strait of Hormuz is viewed as an international transit route. American forces routinely travel through the area, despite sometimes tense encounters with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For Iran’s part, it compares the American presence to Tehran sending warships to the Gulf of Mexico.

Tensions have been high since US President Donald Trump’s May withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear deal, which saw sanctions lifted for Tehran limiting its uranium enrichment. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate within the country’s Shiite theocracy whose major achievement was the deal, has repeatedly warned that any attempt to stop Iran’s export of crude oil could see it close the strait.

The 5th Fleet says it has not seen any ‘‘unsafe and unprofessional’’ actions by Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf since August 2017.