The US Navy warned Thursday that it was ‘closely monitoring' Iran's annual naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point through which a fifth of the world's oil shipments flow.
Responding to the US Navy's choice of words in reference to the Persian Gulf, which a CENTCOM spokesman referred to as the “Arabian Gulf” on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif took to Twitter to offer the Navy a history lesson.
“US Navy can't seem to find its way around our waters. Perhaps because it hasn't figured out its name: Persian Gulf, as it's been called for 2,000 years longer than US has existed,” Zarif quipped.
“Or maybe [the US Navy] doesn't know what it's doing in our backyard, 7,000 miles from home,” the Foreign Minister added, attaching a map showing the distance between the Persian Gulf and Florida.
Zarif's tweet follows US Navy Captain Bill Urban's statement about the US being “aware of the increase in #Iran naval operations within the Arabian Gulf, Strait of #Hormuz and Gulf of Oman.”
The Iranian Foreign Minister's reply received the support of Twitter followers, who joked that the US Navy “needs to send its captains back to Annapolis to take geography 101,” and recalled Iran's rich history dating back to the days of the Persian Empire.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of Iran's armed forces, reportedly assembled over a hundred vessels, many…
