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Nineteen Iranian sailors died and 15 were wounded, some seriously, in a friendly fire incident involving two Iranian warships, the country’s navy admitted.
A new anti-ship missile that the Jamaran frigate tested Sunday in the Gulf of Oman struck a support ship, Konarak, setting targets near the disputed Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world oil supplies. .
The incident is another blow to the prestige of the Iranian army, which is still recovering from its unintentional attack on a Ukrainian civilian plane that left Tehran on January 8 and killed all 176 people on board.
Security forces have also been accused of deliberately shooting hundreds of Iranians in November to protest the rising price of gasoline.
A report on state television said the Konarak was hit “after moving a practice target to its destination and failing to create enough distance between it and the target.”
The incident occurred near the port of Jask, about 1,270 km (790 miles) southeast of Tehran, in the Gulf of Oman, state television said.
Iranian state sources quoting a local hospital spokesperson initially said only one sailor had died and two were seriously injured, but the number of deaths rose rapidly on Monday.
Iran was relatively quick to admit the magnitude of the error, following criticism of the Revolutionary Guard, including by high-ranking politicians down to the level of President Hassan Rouhani, for initially trying to cover up that his forces had fired on the plane. Ukrainian.
The navy’s public relations department expressed its condolences to the families of the dead, but also emphasized the defensive disposition and what it described as a spirit of martyrdom seeking for naval personnel.
How the Konarak was reached is unknown, but the Jamaranium may have clung to it as the closest and largest ship it found when it turned on the radar for the final acquisition of the Nour anti-ship missile target. Alternatively, it could have been an attack error by the Jamaican crew.
The Konarak, still on fire, was towed to the nearby port of Chabahar, with photographs showing its superstructure, including its completely destroyed command bridge. Images of the dead crew were also posted, as well as messages of condolences from high-ranking figures in the armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most strategically important shipping lanes in the world and, over the past year, the number of military ships has grown as nations, in alliances or separately, have sought to protect their commercial shipments operating under its national flag.
United States President Donald Trump said last month that he had ordered the United States Army to attack and destroy any Iranian ship that harassed U.S. Navy ships. The order came a week after 11 small, armed Revolutionary Guard speedboats swarmed around US Navy ships. USA
Tensions between Iran and the US USA They have increased since the USA. USA In 2018, it withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran, imposing sanctions on the country and trying to prevent Iran from exporting its oil.
The U.S. Navy 5th Fleet, which monitors the region, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran is currently negotiating with the United States over a major prisoner exchange, which on Monday Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said he had released scientist Sirous Asgari, who was being held in the United States and who was at the same time moving to slowly relax controls introduced as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The latest government figures have shown a recent increase in the number of newly infected after more than fifteen days of low deaths and infections.
The Iranian government has probably been forced to relax its physical distancing patterns faster than it would like due to the scale of poverty in the country. A government spokesman said he had chosen a scenario intended to cause fewer than 10,000 deaths.
A report released on Sunday by Mohammad Reza Yousefi, professor of economics at Mofid University in Qom, showed that 12 million working families did not have enough income, which means that almost 45 million Iranians are in poor households .
