BREAKING: Earlier today the US Coast Guard Cutter Maui fired 30 warning shots from a 50 calibre machine gun after a group of 13 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC) Navy fast boats.
Which allegedly “conducted unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers” while operating close to a US naval formation in the Strait of Hormuz, Kirby says.
John Francis Kirby is a retired rear admiral in the United States Navy who currently serves as the Pentagon Press Secretary and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. He previously worked as a military and diplomatic analyst for CNN from 2017 to 2021. Prior to that, he served as the spokesperson for the United States Department of State from 2015 to 2017. In 2021, Kirby joined the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and concurrently as Spokesperson for the Department of Defense.
The US Navy formation included six vessels escorting the guided missile submarine the USS Georgia.
Pressed on the incident, Kirby says the number of IRGC boats involved is “certainly more than we’ve seen in the recent past,” calls it “significant” and notes it occurred in an “international chokepoint waterway”. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, founded after the Iranian Revolution on 22 April 1979 by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Iran claimed that their IRGC has the fastest boats in the world, he said it is trying to push the speed up to 80 knots per hour or even further.
Kirby says DOD does not know to what extent the government in Tehran was involved in the command and the control of the incident.
But the simple question remains unanswered! Why is the “US Coast Guard” 7,000 miles away from the US coast?
USS Georgia, an Ohio-class submarine, is the second vessel of the United States Navy to be named for the U.S. state of Georgia.
Commissioned: 11 February 1984
Test depth: Greater than 800 feet (240 m)
Armament: 4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes; 154 × BGM-109 Tomahawks in 22 groups of seven
