By Xinhua
Tehran : Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said on Thursday that the United States is using an incident between U.S. and Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz into cover up its President George W. Bush’s “failed” visit to the Middle East.
“The U.S. administration needs to make hue and cry to achieve its political goals and cover up the failed visit of the U.S. president to the Middle East region,” said IRGC Deputy Commander in charge of Naval Forces Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi.
Simultaneous with the current visit of the U.S. president to the Middle East region, the Pentagon “has launched a media campaign to obtain its sinister goals against Iran,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Fadavi as saying..
The IRGC commander insisted that as a routine practice, IRGC naval boats “have always conducted regular patrols in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf in the past 20 years in conformity with international regulation.”
“Nothing new has occurred and all inspections and control of ships and warships in the Strait of Hormuz are quite normal,” Fadavi added.
The Pentagon said Monday that five Iranian boats had harassed and threatened three U.S. Navy warships in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz.
Bush administration officials immediately warned Iran to refrain from taking “provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future.”
But Iran responded by calling the incident “something normal” and said the incident has been resolved.