Revolutionary Guards Contact US Aircraft Carrier

The US aircraft carrier which the IRGC said it has contacted. Mehr news agency
The US aircraft carrier which the IRGC said it has contacted. Mehr news agency
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Revolutionary Guards Contact US Aircraft Carrier

The US aircraft carrier which the IRGC said it has contacted. Mehr news agency
The US aircraft carrier which the IRGC said it has contacted. Mehr news agency

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy Commander revealed on Friday new information about the surveillance and detection of a US strike group, including USS Nimitz aircraft carrier.

Rear Admiral Ali Reza Tangsiri told Iranian television that the US carriers were monitored by the army’s naval forces and IRGC’s navy under the supervision of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the leadership of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

He said Iran monitored the US naval forces by air and by sea, adding that the flotilla has not entered the Gulf area for the past 10 months.

“IRGC forces detected the US strike group. The Iran forces contacted them and asked them some questions,” Tangsiri said, confirming that the US forces responded to the Iranian inquiries.

“This area belongs to us. We have full control over it from the moment a vessel sets sail from a port to the moment it arrives,” the Iranian Admiral said.

“The Americans should be in the Arabian Gulf, because when they are there, this means that we completely control them,” he added.

On Wednesday, Tangsiri said that a drone of the IRGC’s Navy detected a US strike group before the flotilla cruised through the Strait of Hormuz and into the waters of the Gulf.

The detected US vessels were the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier along with its flotilla of ships, including two destroyers with identification numbers 114 and 104, battle cruisers 58 and 59, two patrol frigates with identification numbers 9 and 12, and a coast guard cutter with code 1333.

Tangsiri said the IRGC Navy will acquire drone and helicopter-carrying vessels this year.

The Iranian Army’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi said Iran monitors US naval forces “the moment they set sail from port.”

He added that the Iranian Navy conducts its operations, such as monitoring and controlling the movements of US vessels through full coordination with the IRGC.

He said the Americans are monitored by the Iranian Army’s Navy in the Arabian Sea. “Once they enter the Arabian Gulf, it’s the IRGC which monitors them,” he said.

The Iranian Commander revealed that the Dena destroyer, a vessel of the Jamaran-class, will be unveiled in December.

He told Press TV that a fourth Fateh submarine is being developed with air-independent propulsion (AIP), allowing the craft to remain submerged for a longer duration.



80 Years Ago World War II in Europe Was Over. Celebrating V-E Day Is Now Tinged with Some Dread 

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (Frist row - 3rd R) holds a European Union flag during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, as part of a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on May 7, 2025. (AFP)
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (Frist row - 3rd R) holds a European Union flag during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, as part of a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on May 7, 2025. (AFP)
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80 Years Ago World War II in Europe Was Over. Celebrating V-E Day Is Now Tinged with Some Dread 

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (Frist row - 3rd R) holds a European Union flag during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, as part of a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on May 7, 2025. (AFP)
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (Frist row - 3rd R) holds a European Union flag during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, as part of a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on May 7, 2025. (AFP)

Even if the end of World War II in Europe spawned one of the most joyous days the continent ever lived, Thursday’s 80th anniversary of V-E Day is haunted as much by the specter of current-day conflict as it celebrates the defeat of ultimate evil.

Hitler’s Nazi Germany had finally surrendered after a half-decade of invading other European powers and propagating racial hatred that led to genocide, the Holocaust and the murdering of millions.

That surrender and the explosion of hope for a better life is being celebrated with parades in London and Paris and towns across Europe while even the leaders of erstwhile mortal enemies France and Germany are bonding again.

Germany’s new foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, paid tribute to “the enormous sacrifices of the Allies” in helping his country win its freedom from the Nazis and said that millions of people were “disenfranchised and tormented by the Nazi regime.”

“Hardly any day has shaped our history as much as May 8, 1945,” he said in a statement. “Our historical responsibility for this breach of civilization and the commemoration of the millions of victims of the Second World War unleashed by Nazi Germany gives us a mandate to resolutely defend peace and freedom in Europe today."

A German soldier carries a small coffin with the remains of fallen German soldiers of WWII to the grave during a funeral service at a memorial site for fallen soldiers in Halbe, Germany, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP)

His comments underscore that former European enemies may thrive — to the extent that the 27-nation European Union even won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize — but that the outlook has turned gloomy over the past year.

Bodies continue to pile up in Ukraine, where Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion started the worst war on the continent since 1945. The rise of the hard right in several EU member states is putting the founding democratic principles of the bloc under increasing pressure.

And even NATO, that trans-Atlantic military alliance that assured peace in Europe under the US nuclear umbrella and its military clout, is under internal strain rarely seen since its inception.

“The time of Europe’s carefree comfort, joyous unconcern is over. Today is the time of European mobilization around our fundamental values and our security,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a Dutch memorial event in the lead-up to the celebrations.

It makes this unlikely stretch of peace in Europe anything but a given.

"This peace is always unsure. There are always some clouds above our heads. Let’s do what we can, so that peace should reign forever in Europe,” Robert Chot, a Belgian World War II veteran, told a solemn gathering of the European legislature.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola sounded gloomy.

Britain's Queen Camilla (L), flanked by Constable of the Tower of London, General Gordon Messenger (R), visits the ceramic poppies installation at the Tower of London on May 6, 2025 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of V-E Day also known as Victory in Europe Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. (AFP)

“Once again war has returned to our continent, once again cities are being bombed, civilians attacked, families torn apart. The people of Ukraine are fighting not only for their land, but for freedom, for sovereignty, for democracy, just as our parents and our grandparents once did,” she told the legislature on Wednesday.

“The task before us today is the same as it was then to honor memory, to protect democracy, to preserve peace,” Metsola said.

Commemorations have been going all week through Europe, and Britain has taken a lead. Here too, the current-day plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russia took center stage.

“The idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow, is completely wrong,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. “Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.”

In London later Thursday, a service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade. In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to oversee a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.

And in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will again highlight how Germany has remodeled itself into a beacon of European democracy by laying a wreath at the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.

And, symbolically, Russia and President Vladimir Putin will be totally out of lockstep with the rest of Europe, celebrating its Victory Day one day later with a huge military parade on Red Square in central Moscow to mark the massive Soviet contribution to defeat Nazi Germany.