Media reports citing U.S. navy officials indicated that on 2 April, “a group of boats from Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed two U.S. Coast Guard ships… in the Persian Gulf”. “The American crews issued multiple warnings over a three-hour period as the Iranian ships continued to buzz them… after approximately three hours of the U.S. issuing warnings and conducting defensive maneuvers, the IRGCN vessels maneuvered away from the U.S. ships and opened distance between them”, a U.S. navy spokesperson reported; according to the Fifth Fleet it was the first instance of an “unsafe and unprofessional” interaction involving Iranian and U.S. vessels since April 2020.