Alwaght- Iran sent five armed craft towards a US Navy warship in the person gulf as the four-star American commander was on board.
General Joseph Votel got an unexpected, 500-yard personal look at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy when he was on board the USS New Orleans in the Strait of Hormuz.
A US defense official said there were two separate encounters with the Iranian boats. The first was with a Houdong class patrol boat and the second with four smaller Iranian vessels. There was at least one bridge-to-bridge communication between the Americans and Iranians, the official said.
The encounters were deemed safe by the US, one defense official said, noting that Iranians often shadow US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.
IRGC seized two of the United States Navy boats and arrested ten marines after they trespassed in to Iran’s territorial waters on January 12.
Iran released American Navy forces after the US apologized for the incident.
The US military has fired the commander of a team of Navy sailors, saying it has lost confidence in commander Eric Rasch, who was the executive officer of the coastal riverine squadron.
The statement also blamed Rasch for ‘complacency’ and failure to maintain standards in the 10-member unit.
Rasch became the first person to be publicly singled out after a preliminary investigation into the incident that occurred near Iran’s Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf.
Several other sailors also received administrative reprimands.
