WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The United States says it will a make a series of military moves in the Persian Gulf after Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy seized two invading foreign oil tankers in the country’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks.
“The Department of Defense will be making a series of moves to bolster our defensive posture” in the Persian Gulf, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a press briefing.
He said the U.S. Central Command will provide additional details on those reinforcements in the coming days.
Kirby used the oft-repeated refrain that Washington will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East waterways.
He said the U.S. will also be increasing its “coordination and interoperability” with regional allies in the coming weeks.
The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said it was working with regional allies to increase the rotation of ships and aircraft patrolling around the Strait of Hormuz.
About a fifth of the world’s crude oil and oil products passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point between Iran and Oman, according to data from analytics firm Vortexa.
A spokesperson from the U.S. military’s Florida-based Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said the United States was discussing options with regional partners.
Iran has made it clear that it views U.S. military vessels lurking in the waters of the Persian Gulf as a threat to its national security and a source of tensions and instability in the region.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly vowed to give a decisive response to any hostile move by Washington that would disrupt the security of the strategic waterway.
Earlier this month, a Panama-flagged oil tanker was confiscated by the IRGC’s naval units in the strategic waterway near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, the second such incident in less than a week.
The Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet claimed in a statement that the Greek-owned tanker, going by the name of Niovi, was sailing from Dubai towards Fujairah, a port and oil terminal in the United Arab Emirates, when it was stopped by the IRGC Navy on May 3.
At the time, the official IRNA news agency cited Tehran’s Public Prosecutor as saying that the oil vessel had been impounded by the IRGC Navy following a complaint by a plaintiff and on a judicial order.
The seizure came six days after Iran’s Navy seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Sea of Oman. The oil tanker, named Advantage Sweet, had been involved in a maritime accident with an Iranian fishing craft, which resulted in the injury and missing of a number of its crew.
After the collision, the oil tanker attempted to flee the scene in serious breach of international laws and regulations, which require the provision of medical treatment and supply of proper and sufficient medicine to seamen in case of sickness or injury.
The Iranian fishermen managed to issue a distress call long after recovering from the shock.