Iran fired missiles and attacked a scale replica of a U.S. warship in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday as part of massive military war games, state media outlets reported.
The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard test-fired what it said were new 223 mph underwater missiles during the drills, code named Great Prophet 9, according to Press TV.
Pictures showed a number of gunboats swarming the model warship and blasting it with missiles. The model "of an American aircraft carrier" was built to scale and targeted with cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, according to Fars News.
The drills also featured "speedboats equipped with naval radars, electronic communications systems, cruise missiles with a range of 25 kilometers, anti-ship medium-range missiles, medium- and large-caliber torpedoes, sea mines, heavy machine guns, rocket-launchers and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles," Press TV said.
Western navies also stage military exercises in the Gulf, saying they wish to guarantee freedom of navigation.
Some 30 percent of all seaborne-traded oil flows through Hormuz, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and U.S. officials have expressed concern in the past that Iran could try to disrupt the oil flow or even attack American warships patrolling the waters of the Gulf.
The Guard's Navy Commander, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, was recently quoted by state media claiming: "We can destroy a U.S. warship in 50 seconds."
A ceremony marking Wednesday’s exercises was attended by commanders of the Guards and by by parliament speaker Ali Larijani.
"We have noticeably expanded the defense budget of the armed forces to ensure the stable security of the region," Larijani told a news conference before the exercises, according to Fars News.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
