WASHINGTON -- A U.S. Navy destroyer fired three warning shots at armed Iranian patrol boats as they sped toward the American warship at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon said Monday.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said a group of four fast-attack boats of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps navy had ignored multiple attempts by the crew of the USS Mahan to warn them away. The Mahan used an audible siren, flashing lights and a ship's whistle to warn the Iranians and managed to establish radio communication. The initial warnings were not heeded, prompting the decision to fire three warning shots with a .50-caliber machine gun, Davis said.
The Iranian boats then turned away.
One of Iranian boats traveled within 900 yards of the Mahan. The confrontation happened Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway at the entrance to the Gulf.
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, a U.S. defense official said.
"This was an unsafe and unprofessional interaction," Davis said.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest added, "These types of actions are certainly concerning and certainly risk escalating tensions."
U.S. relations with Iran are among the foreign policy issues that President-elect Donald Trump will inherit next week when he succeeds President Barack Obama. During the campaign, Trump promised to take a harder line on Iran.
Revolutionary Guard naval forces have typically acted more aggressively against U.S. ships in the Gulf than the conventional Iranian navy.
Iranian authorities have arrested several Iranian-American dual nationals, and there have been various maritime incidents since the 2015 nuclear deal reached by the U.S., Iran and five other nations. American officials often have interpreted these as hard-liner efforts to undermine Tehran's more moderate president, Hassan Rouhani.
Most confrontations with Iranian naval forces in the Gulf do not usually reach the point of prompting warning shots. The last such incident was Aug. 25 when the USS Squall fired in the direction of an Iranian boat in the northern Gulf.
A year ago, Iran detained 10 American soldiers for about 15 hours after they wandered into Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The detention, while brief, raised tensions between the longtime foes after Iran published images of the soldiers kneeling with their hands on their heads.
Davis said that in 2015 and early 2016 that there were many unsafe and unprofessional Iranian naval maneuvers in the Gulf, but relatively few lately.
The confrontation came one day before Iran's parliament on Monday approved expanded military spending, including funds for its long-range missile program, Iranian media reported.
Iran insists its ballistic missile tests do not violate a 2015 accord with world powers aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear advances. But the nuclear deal specifies that Iran halt development of missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads. Iran, in turn, claims its missile program is not designed for such warheads.
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns of The Associated Press; and by Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Brian Murphy of The Washington Post.
A Section on 01/10/2017