Iran launches missiles at mock US Navy ship raising tensions

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards conducted military drills this week and launched missiles at a mock US Navy ship, leading two nearby US military bases to go on heightened alert.

The drills on Tuesday, which were part of annual war games held in the Strait of Hormuz, led the nearby Al Dhafra US Air Base in the United Arab Emirates and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar to raise their alarm level.

“Using new tactics and equipment, the IRGC Air Force demonstrated some of its extensive capabilities in the face of hypothetical enemy threats,” Iranian state TV network IRIB wrote on its website.

″An important achievement of the IRGC’s airspace at this stage of the exercise, the successful firing of ballistic missiles from the depths of the ground was completely camouflaged, which could pose serious challenges to the enemy intelligence agencies,” the website wrote.

US military officials called the exercises carried out this week “reckless” and “irresponsible.”

“The incident lasted for a matter of minutes, and an all clear was declared after the threat indicator had passed,” US Central Command said in a statement Tuesday quoted by Reuters.

A spokeswoman for the US Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, Commander Rebecca Rebarich, said that US forces were “always watchful of this type of irresponsible and reckless behavior by Iran in the vicinity of busy international waterways.” But she added that “this exercise has not disrupted coalition operations in the area nor had any impacts to the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters.”

It was but the latest incident in a period of heightened tensions between the two sides. The last two years had been marked by a series of confrontations, including acts of sabotage on international tankers in the Gulf that Washington blamed on Iran but which Tehran had denied, and the US killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.