TEHRAN: Iran’s military said on Friday it had fired “warning missiles” at two US destroyers in the Gulf of Oman, forcing the vessels to leave the area, according to state media.
It said the two destroyers left the Gulf of Oman “following the firing of warning missiles” by Iranian forces, according to a statement carried by state news agency IRNA.
The operation was in response to “maritime misconduct and harassment, as well as the hijacking of commercial vessels and oil tankers by the terrorist naval forces of the US,” the military said.
The US military’s Central Command was quick to deny that the incident had taken place.
“Iranian forces did NOT attack or fire at US Navy warships. Doing so would be a gross violation of the ceasefire,” it said.
It said its forces “continue to operate freely in regional waters” and were enforcing the US counterblockade on Iranian ports.
It is the latest episode to shake a ceasefire announced on April 8 that has largely halted hostilities between Iran and the US as well as Israel following the outbreak of war on Feb 28, when allied forces targeted Iran.
Efforts to end the war through direct and mediated talks have so far failed.
US state secretary Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Washington was “no longer conducting sustained strikes” against Iran as Operation Epic Fury, the US name for its attacks on Iran, was over.
He added that the US had destroyed what Iran “had left of an air force” in addition to “wiping out their entire conventional navy”.
Iran has, since the onset of the war, imposed a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway connecting the Gulf with the Indian Ocean.
The US later set up its own blockade of Iranian ports.
In peacetime, a fifth of the world’s oil used to pass through the chokepoint.
