SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iran’s long-range missiles landed close to a commercial ship in the Indian Ocean and 100 miles from the Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group, Fox News reported on Saturday.
Earlier on Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired long-range ballistic missiles into the Indian Ocean on the second day of a military exercise.
Saturday’s drill targets were in the Gulf of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean.
Fox News cited U.S. officials as saying that at least one of the missiles landed 20 miles from the commercial vessel.
Fox News also reported that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group was also in the vicinity — about 100 miles away — from where at least two Iranian missiles exploded on impact when they hit the ocean, sending shards of debris in all directions.
“We were expecting the missile launch,” Fox News quoted one of the officials as saying.
The official added that there was concern just how close Iran was willing to push the envelope.
The Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group has remained in the northern Arabian Sea on the orders of U.S. President Donald Trump through the inauguration, according to Fox News.
Iran has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East, regarding them as a deterrent and retaliatory force against the United States and other adversaries in the event of war.
There have been periodic confrontations between Iran’s military and U.S. forces in the Gulf since 2018, when Trump abandoned Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reinstated harsh sanctions against Tehran.
“One of our most important defense policy goals is to use long-range ballistic missiles against enemy warships, including aircraft carriers and warships,” state media quoted Guards commander Major General Hossein Salami as saying, Reuters reported.
With these missiles, which have a range of 1,800 kilometers, he said, “we can now strike moving targets in the ocean,” instead of the usual low-speed cruise missiles.
On Wednesday, Iran tested short-range naval missile in the Gulf and there were exercises earlier this month that featured a wide array of domestically produced drones.
