Iran’s regime has maintained its tough-talk challenge to the US military, telling the American navy and warplanes to stay out of the Persian Gulf.
Admiral Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said on Wednesday, “The presence of American forces in the Persian Gulf lacks any legal and international justification and is against the will of the regional nations.”
Iranian vessels have reportedly challenging US warships twice in recent days in the Straits of Hormuz. A US patrol ship changed its course after a speedboat came within 100 meters, and an American official said Iran had threatened to shoot down two US Navy aircraft as they were flying over the Straits.
However, Shamkhani dismissed the accounts as the White House’s “media hue and cry.”
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, echoed, “Reports by American officials about the failure of the IRGC naval forces’ vessels to keep their distance and their confrontation with…[American] vessels are sheer lies.”
Fadavi claimed that the US had tried to establish a direct line of communication with the IRGC Navy for the past “three or four years” but Iranian officials refused the request: “The Americans must respectfully end their presence in the Persian Gulf to avoid problems.”
