- The US Navy mocked Iran after firing missiles at a US aircraft carrier on Tuesday and Wednesday.
- The Navy posted a photo on its social media account of a fictional ship with the caption: “Iran builds a target ship. They are experts at it.”
- Iran dragged a drill from a US ship into the Strait of Hormuz in an apparent show of force toward the United States.
- The United States has the most powerful aircraft carrier fleet, with 11 aircraft carriers. Iran has none.
- The exercise came amid mounting tensions between the two countries.
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The United States Navy taunted Iran after its paramilitary forces fired underground missiles at a fake US aircraft carrier on Wednesday.
The photo, posted on the Army’s Instagram account, featured a replica of an Iran-built aircraft carrier, along with the caption: “Iran builds a target ship. They are experts at it.”
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The United States naval fleet is unparalleled in the rest of the world, surpassing all countries both technologically and in terms of size, with an army of 11 aircraft carriers. Iran does not have flat floors.
Instead, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard relies on large groups of small, low-tech vessels to launch swarm attacks, as demonstrated by the American model that was dragged into the Hormuz Strait in recent days.
“We cannot talk about what Iran hopes to gain by building this model, or what tactical value they would expect to obtain by using such a model in a training or exercise setting,” said the Commander. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet, which oversees operations in the Middle East, told The Associated Press.
“We continue to trust in the ability of our naval forces to defend against any maritime threat,” he added.
The drill appears to be an attempted show of force against US ships, on which Iran has previously built aftershocks and fired missiles.
“What was shown today in these exercises, at the level of the aerospace and naval forces, was all offensive,” Major General Hossein Salami of the Revolutionary Guard told Iranian state television, according to the BBC.
The exercises initially put US bases on high alert for a threat, but the “incident lasted a few minutes and everything was cleared,” a military statement said, according to Reuters.
The drill comes as tensions between the two countries have been dormant after a US drone attack killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani in January.
Mia Jankowicz contributed to this report.
