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The US channel “Fox News” said that long-range missiles fired by Iran during the “Great Messenger” maneuvers on Saturday landed “seriously” near a merchant ship in the Indian Ocean and about 100 miles from the US carrier group. “Nimitz”, in the latest example On the growing tensions in the region.
He quoted US officials familiar with sensitive intelligence as saying that at least one missile landed within 20 miles of the merchant ship.
As for the United States Navy officers, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier group was also close, some 100 miles away, from where at least two Iranian ballistic missiles exploded when hitting the ocean, sending debris fragments into the ocean. all directions.
“We expected the missile to launch,” Fox News said, citing an official, but there was concern about how close Iran was to its willingness to overcome this problem.
While it is 100 miles away and cannot be seen from the aircraft carrier or its escort ships, US spy satellites have tracked missile launches from Iran. It is not immediately clear if the AN-SPY-1 radar aboard the guided missile cruiser accompanying the Nimitz aircraft carrier tracked the launch.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard said on Saturday that its long-range ballistic missiles that were launched flew more than 1,000 miles in the northern part of the Indian Ocean.
Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said: “One of Tehran’s strategic defensive objectives is to target enemy war fleets, including aircraft carriers and battleships, with ballistic missiles.”
“Moving targets are usually hit by cruise missiles, but the use of ballistic missiles to hit marine targets in the ocean from inside Iranian territory is a great defensive achievement,” Salami added.
Likewise, the commander of the Aerospace Force in the Revolutionary Guard, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that “despite the possession of power by the Americans, the Revolutionary Guard has learned to fight them and can attack them, destroy their defenses and attack them. hard blow, launching 500 missiles at the same time that they cannot make up for their loss ”. .
For his part, the Iranian Chief of Staff, Major General Muhammad Bagheri, said that “Iran has no intention of launching any attack, but it will attack with force and in the shortest possible time. Any opponent thinks about attacking it.” Until next Wednesday “.
Nimitz remained in the Arabian North Sea on the orders of US President Donald Trump. And in early January, the Pentagon changed course and ordered Nimitz to turn around and stay in the Gulf.
Earlier this week, in a show of force, a US guided-missile submarine armed with more than 150 Tomahawk missiles hid near an Iranian naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian missile launch on Saturday comes days after the first anniversary of Iran’s launch of ballistic missiles at a base in Iraq that houses US forces. No Americans died, but more than 100 suffered head injuries.
The Iranian agency “Tasnim” published the video clip, which shows “an Iranian operations room and the moment when the launch button of the missiles that fell inside the base located in the Anbar province, western Iraq, was pressed. causing huge explosions at the site, where the flames reached tens of meters. “
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