Iran Warns U.S. Aircraft Carrier Not to Return to Gulf

Kenneth Abbate/U.S. Navy, via Associated Press

The aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Strait of Hormuz in November.

By J. DAVID GOODMAN
NYT

Iran’s military sharpened its tone toward the United States on Tuesday with a blunt warning that an American aircraft carrier that left the Persian Gulf through the strategic Strait of Hormuz last week should not return.

The warning, by Iran’s military chief, was the latest and most aggressive volley in a nearly daily exchange of barbed statements between Iran and the United States. Iran has just finished ambitious naval exercises near the strait, and it has repeatedly threatened to close the passage — through which roughly one-fifth of all the crude oil traded worldwide passes — if Western powers move forward with new sanctions on Iran’s petroleum exports.

“We recommend to the American warship that passed through the Strait of Hormuz and went to Gulf of Oman not to return to the Persian Gulf,” said Maj. Gen. Ataollah Salehi, the commander in chief of the army, as reported by Iran’s official news agency, IRNA. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will not repeat its warning.”

General Salehi did not say what action Iran would take if the carrier were to re-enter the Persian Gulf.

(More here.)