The US Air Force has flown a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber over key maritime chokepoints in the Middle East with allies, including Bahrain, amid ongoing tensions with Iran.
The exercise took place over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arabian Gulf on Saturday through which 20 per cent of all oil traded passes, the Stars and Stripes military newspaper reported yesterday.
It also flew over the Red Sea, its narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait and Egypt’s Suez Canal.
The Strait of Hormuz has been the scene of attacks on shipping blamed on Iran in recent years, while the Red Sea has seen similar assaults amid an ongoing shadow war between Tehran and Israel. Iran has denied being involved in the attacks, though it has promised to take revenge on Israel for a series of attacks targeting its nuclear programme.
Fighter jets from Bahrain as well as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia flew alongside the bomber.
Iranian state media did not immediately acknowledge the flyover. Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The flyover comes after a pattern of such flights by nuclear-capable B-52 bombers since the days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, used as a show of force to Iran.
In 2018, he unilaterally withdrew America from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Tehran agree to drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
In the time since, Iran has abandoned all the limits of the deal and drastically reduced the ability of international inspectors to keep watch over its programme.
While Iran insists its nuclear endeavours are peaceful, intelligence agencies, Western inspectors and others say Tehran has a structured military nuclear weapons programme.
President Joe Biden has said he’s willing to re-enter the nuclear deal, but talks have stalled as a hard-line protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took over as president.
Biden sending a B1-B bomber into the region allows him to send ‘a clear message of reassurance’ to regional allies, as the US Air Force’s Central Command put it on Twitter. The B-1B came from the 37th Bomb Squadron based at Ellsworth Air Force Base in the US state of South Dakota.
US officials, speaking earlier to Reuter’s news agency, said the US had regularly maintained a bomber presence in the region.
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