Iran warns US Navy their ships in Strait of Hormuz are within missile range

Iranian military personnel took part in the “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz” exercise in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. (Press Office Of The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A senior Iranian official has issued a stark warning: American warships now sailing through the Strait of Hormuz lie within easy striking range of Iranian missiles. The United States Navy, he declared, is “under our missile launchers.” 

Try not to chuckle.

According to Iran International, Mohsen Rezai, a military adviser to the now deceased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered the threat in a video that does nothing to calm the rising tensions in one of the world’s most vital waterways.

“The launchers have most likely been moved by our brothers and are now aimed at the Abraham Lincoln and all American warships,” Rezai said. “They are all under our launchers now and we will sink them all. We will not allow a single one to escape us.”

Such language is not new from Tehran, yet it carries the familiar blend of bluster and menace that has long defined the regime’s posture toward the West. 

The Islamic Republic delights in painting itself as the bold David to America’s lumbering Goliath, even as its own economy buckles under sanctions and its people grow restive under clerical rule. One wonders how many times the mullahs must issue these theatrical threats before the world ceases to treat them as serious statements of policy and begins to recognize them for what they are: the desperate posturing of a regime that senses its own fragility.

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