DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Iran moved a mock aircraft carrier to the strategic Strait of Hormuz amid tensions between Tehran and the US.
An image by Maxar Technologies taken on Sunday shows the fast speed of an Iranian boat towards the carrier, sending waves in its wake, after a tugboat pulled it into the strait from the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.
Iranian media and state officials have yet to acknowledge taking the aftershock to the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. However, his appearance there suggests that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is preparing an encore for a similar drill that it conducted in 2015.
The Bahrain-based 5th Fleet of the US Navy, which patrols the Middle East’s waterways, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The replica resembles the Nimitz-class carriers that the US Navy routinely sails in the Persian Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the waterway. The class’ namesake USS Nimitz has just entered Middle Eastern waters late last week from the Indian Ocean, likely to replace USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea.
It is unclear when or if the Nimitz will pass through the Strait of Hormuz or not during its time in the Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed last year when tensions initially increased, spent months in the Arabian Sea before traversing the strait. The Eisenhower crossed the strait early last week.
The replica carries 16 models of fighter jets on its deck, according to satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies. The boat appears to be about 200 meters (650 feet) long and 50 meters (160 feet) wide. A true Nimitz is over 300 meters (980 feet) long and 75 meters (245 feet) wide.
The model looks very similar to a similar one used in February 2015 during a military exercise called “Great Prophet 9”. During that exercise, Iran invaded the fake aircraft carrier with speedboats firing machine guns and rockets. The land-sea missiles then attacked and destroyed the fake aircraft carrier.
That exercise, however, occurred when Iran and world powers remained locked in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Today, the agreement born from those negotiations is in tatters. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement in May 2018. Iran later responded by slowly abandoning almost all tenants of the agreement, although it still allows UN inspectors to access its nuclear sites.
Last summer, a series of attacks and incidents further fueled tensions between Iran and the US, culminating in the January 3 drone attack near Baghdad International Airport that killed Qassim Soleimani. , head of the expeditionary Quds of the Guard, or Jerusalem, Force. Iran retaliated with a ballistic missile attack that wounded dozens of US troops stationed in neighboring Iraq.
Given the time Iran moved the replica into the sea, with satellite photos showing it being pulled out of port on Saturday, a drill targeting it may be a direct response from Tehran to an incident last week. That event involved an American F-15 fighter jet approaching a Mahan Air flight over Syria, which saw passengers injured on the Iranian plane.
