Destroyer fires near Iranian boats

A U.S. Navy destroyer opened fire Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz after four Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps patrol boats acted in a way that a U.S. defense official described as “harassing.”

The USS Mahan, a guided-missile destroyer, fired three warning shots with a .50-caliber machine gun at four Iranian boats after at least one of them traveled within 900 yards of the Mahan with a sailor manning its main gun. The Mahan was traveling north through the strait toward the Persian Gulf with two other Navy vessels, the amphibious craft USS Makin Island and the oiler USNS Walter S. Diehl, said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

“This was an unsafe and unprofessional interaction,” Davis said, citing the speed with which the Iranians approached and the manning of the weapons onboard. “They only stopped their approach following the warning shots being fired.”

Davis said the incident marks a return to a series of provocative encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels that had started to wane over the latter half of 2016. The Navy counted 23 interactions that were deemed unsafe and unprofessional by the Iranians in 2015 and 35 in 2016, but the last significant one occurred in August. In that incident, the coastal patrol ship USS Squall fired three warning shots after three Iranian boats approached the Squall and another similar U.S. ship, the USS Tempest, at high speed.

The 2016 incidents involving Iranian and U.S. vessels also included one last January in which the Iranians took 10 U.S. Navy personnel at gunpoint and held them blindfolded overnight, angering U.S. officials and embarrassing the Navy. In the incident Sunday, the Iranian boats broke away after the warning shots were fired and afterward established radio contact with the Mahan to ask for the destroyer’s course and speed, U.S. officials said.