An Iranian Navy vessel. Photo: Erfan Kouchari via Wikimedia Commons.

US military forces must leave the Persian Gulf region “before any problem arises,” a top Iranian military official warned, the regime-aligned news agency Tasnim reported on Tuesday.

“What has been in place in the Persian Gulf for years and has not changed is the powerful presence and intelligence supremacy (of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy, reportedly said in remarks at a ceremony in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

According to the report, Fadavi criticized the US Navy’s presence in the Persian Gulf, claiming that over the past three decades America has “been the cause of insecurity on regional waters.”

As reported by The Algemeiner, a US Navy coastal patrol ship was forced to change course last week after an IRGC fast-attack craft came within 100 yards of it in the Persian Gulf. This marked the fourth such incident within the past month.

And last weekend, as reported by The Algemeiner, Iran threatened to shoot down two US Navy surveillance planes that were flying over the Persian Gulf close to Iranian airspace.