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The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, said in a statement that it was “working with regional allies and partners to increase the rotation of ships and aircraft” that patrol the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial chokepoint into the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Kirby said that Iran, which has tense relations with the United States — although it has recently been repairing ties with Arab neighbors — has “harassed, attacked or interfered” with 15 internationally flagged merchant vessels over the past 15 years.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen repeated Iranian threats, arm seizures and attacks against commercial shippers who are exercising their navigational rights and freedoms in international waters and strategic waterways of the region,” Kirby said.<\/p>\n
“The United States will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East waterways including the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VOA \u2014 The United States said Friday it was sending reinforcements to the Gulf after what it called increasing harassment by Iran of ships in the oil-rich waters. “The Department of Defense will be making a series of moves to bolster our defensive posture” in the Gulf, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110576"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110579,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110576\/revisions\/110579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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VOA \u2014 The United States said Friday it was sending reinforcements to the Gulf after what it called increasing harassment by Iran of ships in the oil-rich waters.<\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/gdb.voanews.com\/01000000-0aff-0242-2bca-08db4f00a5f5_w100_r1.jpg\")
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