U.S. warships are about 200 miles from an Iranian naval convoy near Yemen and the convoy has been joined by armed vessels, the Pentagon said Thursday.
The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, its escort the guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, and seven other U.S. vessels including the amphibious warship USS Iwo Jima are watching the convoy, which is located in the waters off Yemen where the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea meet.
So far no communication has been made between the U.S. vessels and the Iranian ships, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Thursday. Warren would not elaborate on what type of armed vessels had joined the Iranian convoy, which had been earlier described as a flotilla of container ships.
Earlier Thursday news outlets reported the convoy had turned away from Yemen, which the Pentagon said it would watch to see if that was the case, or if it was just a sea maneuver. “Ships can change direction at any time,” Warren said.
The presence of the Iranian convoy has not halted U.S. air refueling support for the Saudi air campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which the Saudis have continued despite an announcement earlier in the week that they were ending airstrikes there.
“The Iranian ships had no impact on the logistics support we are providing to the Saudis,” Warren said. “We’ve been putting a tanker in the air daily … anytime there are coalition aircraft that need to be refueled there’s an airborne taker they can refuel off of.”
Warren deferred all questions to the State Department and White House about the killing of American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, al Qaeda hostages killed during a CIA drone strike in Pakistan earlier this year. The attacks became public when President Obama acknowledged the loss and mistakes in a statement Thursday.
