As U.S. tensions with Iran rose last week, 17 ships from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Australia launched a major war game just 50 miles from the Iranian coast.
Smack dab in the middle of the gulf, the ships steamed together in wedge formation in the first iteration of the exercise dubbed “Unified Trident.”
“It’s not a show of force to the Iranians at all,” the exercise’s logistical planner, British Royal Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ant Wallace, told the journalists aboard the HMS Ocean on the first day of the exercise.
“The reason we’re doing this exercise, and I’ll stress this over and over again, is because it’s easier to do here than it would be anywhere else … The fact that it’s in the Arabian Gulf is coincidental, really,” he said.