Kirby said Iran had harassed, attacked or interfered with the navigational rights of up to 15 commercial vessels.
Kirby added, in a press statement, that “the Department of Defense will take a series of measures to strengthen our defense position in the Gulf.” He pointed out that the US Central Command will provide additional details about these reinforcements in the coming days.
The US military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This comes after Iran seized two oil tankers in the beginning of this month in the Gulf waters, and demanded the US State Department to release them, in the latest escalation in a series of detentions or attacks on commercial ships in the Gulf since 2019.
The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, said on May 3 that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ naval forces seized the Panamanian-flagged oil tanker Niofi as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz.
The incident came days after Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.
Kirby said the United States strongly condemns actions that threaten and interfere with commercial shipping and that Washington will not allow foreign powers to endanger navigation in the sea lanes of the Middle East.
Kirby went on to say that the United States has detected repeated Iranian threats and attacks on commercial shipping companies that exercise their navigational rights in international waters.
About a fifth of the world’s crude oil and petroleum products pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between Iran and Oman, according to data from analytics firm Vortexa.
