U.S. Navy: Iranian naval forces halt provocations
Bahrain — Iranian naval forces appear to have deliberately halted their provocations of U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf in recent months, a U.S. military official said Thursday.
According to Navy Cmdr. William Urban, spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, there have been no “unsafe and unprofessional” actions by Iranian naval forces in the Gulf since August 2017.
Prior to that, Iranian vessels had periodically made high-speed approaches to U.S. ships that were considered dangerous provocations.
Urban declined to speculate on the reason for the change.
“It seems like they’ve absolutely made a conscious decision to give us more space,” he said. “That is definitely a change in their behavior.”
The last tense encounter between the U.S. Navy and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf was recorded on Aug. 14, 2017, when an unarmed Iranian drone shadowed the Nimitz aircraft carrier at night and came close enough to F-18 fighter jets to put the lives of American pilots at risk, the Navy said.
The drone did not respond to repeated radio calls and came within 1,000 feet of U.S. fighters. In a similar encounter Aug. 8, the Navy said an Iranian drone came within 100 feet of an F-18 preparing to land on the Nimitz.
For the first eight months of 2017, the Navy recorded 14 instances of what it describes as“unsafe and/ o run professionMANAMA, al” interactions with Iranians forces. It recorded 35 in 2016 and 23 in 2015.
Of the incidents at sea last year, the worst involved Iranian forces capturing and holding overnight 10 U.S. sailors who strayed into the Islamic Republic’s territorial waters.
Iranian forces in turn accuse the U.S. Navy of unprofessional behavior, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Persian Gulf.