WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that the United States has seen repeated Iranian threats to commercial shipping in the Gulf and that the Pentagon will begin to strengthen its defense posture in the region.

EDITED BY | ADAM LURKADE

WORLD NEWS

13 MAY 2023

    Kirby said Iran had harassed, attacked, or interfered with the navigational rights of up to 15 commercial vessels flying flags of countries.

"Today, the Department of Defense will take a series of actions to strengthen our defense posture in the Gulf," Kirby told a news briefing.

He said that the US Central Command will provide additional details on these reinforcements in the coming days. The US military has not yet responded to requests for comment.

This comes after Iran seized a second oil tanker a week earlier this month in the Gulf waters, and demanded the US State Department to release it, in the latest escalation in a series of detentions or attacks on commercial ships in the Gulf waters since 2019.

The US Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, said on May 3 that Iranian Revolutionary Guards' naval forces had seized the Panamanian-flagged oil tanker Niofi as it was passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The incident came days after Iran seized an oil tanker flying the flag of the Marshall Islands 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 shipping in the sea lanes in 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.