Iranian navy vows to sail into America’s backyard this spring
Iran’s official new agency has announced that the Iranian navy will visit the western Atlantic Ocean for the first time this spring, including its recently commissioned home-built Sahand destroyer. The move responds to the regular US warship patrol of the Persian Gulf, where nearly 1/3 of all sea-traded oil passes, and the will likely also include a stop in Venezuela, an Iranian ally. The only other Iranian Sahand destroyer was torpedoed, bombed, and sunk by the US in 1988 in retaliation for an Iranian mine that damaged an American frigate and for firing on American warplanes.