Iran Unveils New High-Speed Ship with Warning Message for US Navy (Photo & Video)

Support SouthFront

Tehran has unveiled a new high-speed double-hulled ship with a banner with the words “Go to the Bay of Pigs; the Persian Gulf is our home,” related to the US Navy.

A new speedy helicopter-carrying double-hulled vessel was unveiled by Tehran in the port of Bushehr, Iranian state TV reported on September 13.

Reportedly, the ship is 14 yards wide and 55 yards long. It has an operating range of 10,000 kilometers and is capable to achieve a speed of up to 28 knots, as well as to carry 100 members of crew and one helicopter. The new vessel was named Shahid (martyr) Mohammad Nazeri, after the commander of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy Special Forces unit, who was killed in May in hazy circumstances, with some Iranian reports said he died from exposure to “chemical substances.”

Currently, a banner with the words “Go to the Bay of Pigs; the Persian Gulf is our home,” is said to be displayed on the ship. According to an official Khamenei website, “it indicates US military weakness that stems from their failed operation in the ‘Bay of Pigs’ in Cuba.” The banner is a pointed remark to US ships in the region and refers to the failed US-backed invasion of Cuba in 1961.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon has reported about a jump in the number of Iranian provocations in one of the world’s most important waterways, and the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives introduced a resolution reading that current Iranian military actions were eroding stability in the Persian Gulf.

According to IRGC Navy commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the new ship “increases the deterrent power of Iran and will have an effect on the calculations of the enemy – particularly America.”

“There is no reason for the presence of the U.S. in the Persian Gulf and we have always regarded and will regard it as a factor behind insecurity and evil acts,” he said, adding that the US must leave the waterway.

“The Persian Gulf is our home. It is the Americans who must explain why they have come here from the other side of the world to launch war games,” Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also noted. “They come here from the other side of the world to perform a military exercise? Well, look the other way, towards the Bay of Pigs.”

In August, three warning shots were fired by a US ship in Persian Gulf in the direction of an approaching Iranian vessel. In January, Iran detained ten US Navy seamen, after they drifted into Iranian waters.

Support SouthFront