Iran begins Strait of Hormuz war games - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Iran begins Strait of Hormuz war games

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran launched large-scale war games in the Persian Gulf oil route of the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, holding the military exercises earlier than usual after the country’s leaders expressed new concerns that the U.S. has made a veiled nuclear threat against the Islamic Republic.

Tehran was angered by President Obama’s announcement earlier this month of a new U.S. nuclear policy in which he pledged America would not use atomic weapons against nations that do not have them. Iran and North Korea were pointedly excluded from the non-use pledge, and Iranian leaders took that as an implicit threat.

Iran has been holding military maneuvers, dubbed as The Great Prophet, in the strategic waters annually since 2006 to show off its military capabilities.

The war games have routinely heightened tension in the region, but they have recently taken on added significance as the standoff between the West and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program grows deeper. The West suspects the program conceals a nuclear arms production drive, a charge that Iran denies.

The last four editions of the games were held in the summer. There was no official explanation why they were brought forward this year, but the move came amid rising tensions over Obama’s new nuclear policy and a U.S. push for tougher U.N. sanctions against Tehran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday that the U.S. “nuclear threat” is a “stigma in the U.S. political history,” saying Iranians will not allow the U.S to dominate the country.

Israel also has not ruled out military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

U.S. officials played down the significance of the war games.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said, “They don’t seem out of the ordinary” from what Iran’s military has done in the past. He also said Tehran often makes exaggerated claims about its weapons testing.

“They conduct exercises and tests and war games with some frequency,” he told a Defense Department news conference Wednesday, the day the war games were announced. “I think any sovereign state is obviously within its rights to drill and prepare, and make such preparations for their own defenses.”

Iran has in the past signaled that it would close the Strait of Hormuz if attacked by the West, something that makes holding war games there a particularly sensitive move. Some 40 percent of the world’s oil and energy supplies pass through the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

In 1988, the U.S. Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the waterway as the eight-year Iran-Iraq war was winding down and killed nearly 300 people. Iran claimed it was intentional, as a show of support to Iraqis. The U.S. later paid compensations for the victims.

The Iranian television report said naval, air and ground units from the elite Revolutionary Guard were participating in the three-day games codenamed “The Great Prophet-V.”

Iran also used the games to introduce a new speedboat, describing it as an “ultra-speed and smart” vessel called “Ya Mahdi.” Iran also said 313 smaller speedboats with the capability of firing rockets and missiles would participate.

State television later showed video footage of a Ya Mahdi vessel firing rockets at a still target in the sea, while dozens of the small speedboats launched rocket-propelled grenades at an abandoned ship while troops used a rope to board it in a simulated attack on an enemy warship.

On Wednesday, Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said “new weapons” would be test-fired in the war games, but did not give any details.

Iran has declared many advances in its military industries and sciences to demonstrate self-sufficiency despite sanctions and attempts by the U.S. and its allies to isolate the country over its nuclear program.

The U.S. Navy said it expected “no significant impacts” to its operations in the area, where it has a number of ships, including the aircraft carrier Eisenhower.

“To be prudent, we are fully aware of the activities of other navies, such as Iran, as we are sure they are aware of our activities,” Lt. Matt Allen, a Navy spokesman in the region, said in an e-mail.

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Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report from Washington.