The Iranian Navy announced on Monday that it had successfully tested the new domestically-developed Dehlaviyeh anti-ship missile during large-scale war games in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s naval drills, which began on Sunday, will reportedly take place over two million square kilometers (772,000 square miles—nearly three times the size of Texas). The military drills will cover parts of the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.
Iranian media reported that the navy also tested the Nasir, described as the “latest version of its home-made coast-to-sea cruise missile.” Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan said that the Nasir hit its intended target with maximum precision.
The Trump administration has condemned Iran’s missile development program. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said that Iran’s missile tests were “violations of international norms” that demonstrated the country’s history of “destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.”
In January, a U.S. Navy destroyer fired warning shots towards four Iranian vessels in the Straits of Hormuz after the crafts engaged in “harassing” behavior, a Pentagon spokesman said. According to the U.S. Navy, Iran instigated 23 interactions in 2015 and 35 in 2016 with American vessels that were deemed “unsafe and unprofessional.”
“It’s very common for them to come up to within 300, 500 yards of us, and then they’ll turn, or parallel us and stop,” Lt. Forrest Griggs, the operations officer of the USS New Orleans, told Fox News in July.
In December 2015, an IRGC boat fired rockets within 1,500 yards of the USS Harry S Truman, an action that was termed “highly provocative” by U.S. Central Command spokesman Cmdr. Kyle Raines. In April 2015, Iran seized the Marshall Islands-flagged Maersk Tigris and held it for ten days in violation of international law. The next month, Iranian vessels fired on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship after it refused to sail into Iranian waters, desisting only after the United Arab Emirates dispatched coast guard boats to help the distressed ship.
In a February 2015 naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, Iranian boats destroyed a replica of an American aircraft carrier. During the broadcast of the war games on Iranian state television, a banner flashed across the screen with the quote, “If the Americans are ready to be buried at the bottom of the waters of the Persian Gulf – so be it.”
[Photo: Tasnim News ]