Iranian navy has terrorized international ships for five years: State Department

Iran has endangered international ships for the past five years, the State Department said following President Trump's unequivocal warning to Tehran about such actions. 

“Iran has long used its naval forces to terrorize the international maritime community — this is not a new phenomenon,” reads a fact sheet posted on the department's website on Wednesday, the same day as Trump's Twitter warning Iran about harassing Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the North Persian Gulf.

In 2015 alone, while the international Iran nuclear deal was being negotiated and implemented, the U.S. Navy recorded 22 such incidents by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the department's fact sheet, titled “Iran’s History of Naval Provocations.”

Since then, dozens of similar incidents have occurred.

"I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea," Trump tweeted Wednesday.

The department fact sheet also included a timeline of provocations that long predated the warning.

The provocations include the following:

• January 2016: IRGC naval forces seized two U.S. Navy riverine boats, and detained 10 American sailors for 15 hours. 
• March 2017: USNS Invincible was forced to change course to avoid colliding with IRGCN fast-attack small boats.
• July 2019: IRGC Navy seized the British-flagged Stena Impero tanker while it was transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran held the ship and crew for more than two months.
• April 2020: IRGC Navy forcibly boarded and detained the Hong Kong-flagged SC Taipei oil tanker in international waters, and sailed the tanker into Iranian waters.

More recently, on April 15 of this year, 11 IRGC small boats repeatedly harassed U.S. naval vessels.

“President Trump will not tolerate or appease Iran’s foreign policy of violence and intimidation,” the notice read. “Iran must act like every other normal nation, not a nation that sponsors piracy and terror.”

Tehran today responded to Trump, saying that Iran will defend its maritime rights, and will give “appropriate response” to threats or wrong moves, the Tasnim News Agency reported.