During the final years of the Obama administration, Iranian gunboats regularly harassed U.S. ships, with three dozen such interactions occurring in 2016. During President Donald Trump’s first year in office, the number of annual incidents dropped to 14, a decrease of about 60 percent. So far in 2018, there has not been a single case of harassment, the U.S. Navy told Fox News.
The last reported incident was in August 2017, when an Iranian drone came too close for comfort as an F/A-18 Hornet attempted to land on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.
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The worst incident occurred in January 2016, when the Iranians captured two U.S. Navy riverine patrol boats and 10 sailors.
Trump commented on this issue on the campaign trail, saying, “With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people, that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”
The first incident of the Trump administration occurred in July 2017. A U.S. Navy warship fired a warning shot at an Iranian gunboat that came within 150 yards of the American vessel.
The Navy publicly acknowledged the changes in Iran’s behavior in March.
“It seems like they’ve absolutely made a conscious decision to give us more space,” Navy Cmdr. William Urban, spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, told reporters. “That is definitely a change in...Read More HERE
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