Britain will send a third Royal Navy warship to the Gulf, the defence ministry announced Tuesday (July 16th), AFP reported.
Britain has already sent the HMS Duncan, an air defence destroyer, to cover for frigate HMS Montrose while it undergoes maintenance in nearby Bahrain, and also will send frigate HMS Kent "later this year".
Reports said it would head to the Gulf in mid-September.
HMS Montrose last week warned off three Iranian gunboats that UK officials said were trying to "impede" the progress of a British supertanker through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.
The defence ministry said the HMS Kent would be "taking over" from HMS Duncan, but said an "occasional overlap of ships when one deployment begins and another ends... is not uncommon”, suggesting all three could be in the region at some point.
The ministry said the deployments were "long-planned" to ensure "an unbroken presence" in the crucial waterway and "do not reflect an escalation in the UK posture in the region".
Iranian officials have denied last Wednesday's incident in the Strait of Hormuz ever happened.
The British government has in any case raised the alert level for ships travelling through Iranian waters to three on a three-point scale, indicating a "critical" threat.
The UK is sending a third warship to the Gulf. Britain was upset when Iran took the decision to deal with it in the same manner. Didn’t Britain know that its seizure of the oil tanker at Gibraltar is a form of piracy and against the international law? Or do the super powers have their own law?
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