More than 3,000 US troops arrived in the Red Sea aboard two warships to deter Iran from seizing tankers, the US Navy announced on Monday (August 7th). Embarked on the ships USS Bataan and USS Carter-Hall, these soldiers “add significant flexibility and operational capability as we work…to deter destabilizing activity and defuse regional tensions caused by harassment and seizures of merchant ships by Iran,” US 5th Fleet spokesman Commander Tim Hawkins told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The United States announced in July the deployment of a warship and F-35 and F-16 fighter jets. Last week, a US official told AFP that Washington was preparing to deploy troops to commercial tankers transiting the Gulf, hoping to dissuade Iran from seizing those ships.
According to the US military, Iran has seized or attempted to seize nearly 20 internationally flagged vessels in the region over the past two years. The US Navy notably announced, at the beginning of July, that it opposed the seizure by Iran of two oil tankers in international waters off the coast of Oman. Tehran had however managed to seize a merchant ship in the waters of the Gulf.
The Iranian army had also seized at the end of April in the Gulf of Oman a tanker flying the flag of the Marshall Islands bound for the United States, before seizing a week later a tanker flying the flag of Panama which was sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.