Gulf tensions rise as Iranian drone 'downed'

Teheran denies any confrontation with US navy near Strait of Hormuz

TEHERAN - Iran on Friday denied US President Donald Trump's statement that a US warship destroyed an Iranian drone near the Persian Gulf after it threatened the ship - an incident that marked a new escalation of tensions between the countries less than a month after Iran downed a US drone in the same waterway and Trump came close to retaliating with a military strike.

The Iranian military said all its drones had returned safely to their bases, and denied there was any confrontation with a US vessel the previous day.

"We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on social media.

The Strait of Hormuz is at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and serves as the passageway for a fifth of all global crude exports. A clash there highlights the risk of conflict between Iran and the United States.

Trump on Thursday said the USS Boxer took defensive action after an Iranian drone closed to within 1,000 meters of the warship and ignored multiple calls to stand down.

Trump blamed Iran for a "provocative and hostile" action and said the US responded in self-defense. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters as he arrived for a meeting at the United Nations that "we have no information about losing a drone today".

After Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal last year and imposed economic sanctions on Teheran, the Iranians have pushed back on the military front, shooting down a US drone on June 20.

Also in the past weeks, the Persian Gulf region has seen six attacks on oil tankers that the US has blamed on Iran, and a tense encounter between Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the British navy. Iran has denied involvement in the attacks or the British naval encounter.

The US has also sent thousands of additional troops and increased its security presence in the region.

The Pentagon said Thursday's incident happened at 10 am local time in international waters while the Boxer was transiting the waterway to enter the Persian Gulf. The Boxer is among several US Navy ships in the area, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been operating in the nearby North Arabian Sea for weeks.

Neither Trump nor the Pentagon spelled out how the Boxer destroyed the drone. CNN reported that the ship used electronic jamming to bring it down rather than hitting it with a missile.

Escalation

Thursday's incident was the latest in a series of events that raised US-Iran tensions since early May when Washington accused Teheran of threatening US forces and interests in Iraq and in the Gulf.

In response, the US accelerated the deployment of the Lincoln and its strike group to the Arabian Sea and deployed four B-52 long-range bombers to the Gulf state of Qatar. It has since deployed additional Patriot air defense missile batteries in the Gulf region.

Shortly after Iran shot down a US Navy drone aircraft in June, Trump ordered a retaliatory military strike but called it off at the last moment, saying the risk of casualties was disproportionate to the downing by Iran, which did not cost any US lives.

Iran claimed the US drone violated its airspace; the Pentagon denied this.

Zarif said on Thursday that Iran and the US were only "a few minutes away from a war" after Iran downed the US drone. He spoke to media on the sidelines of his visit to the UN. "We live in a very dangerous environment," he said. "The United States has pushed itself and the rest of the world into probably the brink of an abyss."

Zarif blamed Washington for the escalation and accused the Washington of "trying to starve our people" and "deplete our treasury" through economic sanctions.

Agencies - Xinhua

(China Daily 07/20/2019 page8)