2023-04-20 16:06:28
IRAN-USA-TRANSPORT-DIPLOMATIC
Iranian navy says it ‘forced’ US submarine to surface
TEHRAN, April 20, 2023 – The Iranian navy announced on Thursday that it “forced” an American submarine to surface, while passing through the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf, an assertion immediately denied by the American navy.
Iranian Navy Commander Shahram Irani said the sunken US submarine USS Florida was “approaching (Iranian territorial waters) in complete silence”.
An Iranian submarine ‘forced’ it to the surface after it ‘partially entered Iranian territorial waters’, Irani told state television, claiming that Iran would carry the case before international bodies.
“Absolutely false” information, reacted the 5th fleet of the United States based in the Gulf. “No American submarine has passed through the Strait of Hormuz recently,” she added in a brief statement on Twitter, denouncing “an example of Iranian disinformation which is destabilizing the region”.
The area of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic crossing point for the world oil trade, linking the Gulf to the Sea of Oman, is at the heart of strong tensions.
A sworn enemy of the United States, Iran regularly denounces the presence of foreign forces, in particular the American 5th Fleet stationed in Bahrain, threatening on several occasions to block the strait in the event of military action by Washington in the area.
It is the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, who control naval operations in the Gulf, and are responsible for ensuring the security of the strait.
Washington has repeatedly accused Iran of disrupting maritime traffic in the area.
In June 2022, the US Navy denounced the “dangerous” way in which three Revolutionary Guard ships had interacted when US Navy boats passed through the strait.
In January 2020, Iran fired missiles at a US airbase in Iraq that housed US troops, in revenge for the assassination a few days earlier of the former head of the Quds Force, in charge of the Guardians’ external operations. the Revolution, Qassem Soleimani, by an American raid in Baghdad.
With AFP
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