Iran's state TV reported Thursday that speedboats belonging to the country's Revolutionary Guard have intercepted US vessels in the Persian Gulf. A US Navy spokesman said he was not aware of any such encounter at sea over the past days.

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The region remains on edge over Iran's escalating nuclear program. Talks in Vienna to revive Tehran's now-tattered 2015 accord with world powers have stalled since June, with no date set for their resumption.

Thursday's Iranian report aired footage that the TV said was filmed from one of the Guard speedboats. It shows at least one vessel with the US flag and personnel on board as at least two speedboats appear to be chasing it. Other non-Iranian vessels in the video were not identifiable, however.

A voice is heard in the footage, saying in Farsi: "Keep chasing them." The report did not say when the encounter took place.

Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the US Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said he was not aware of any sort of unsafe interaction with Iran in the last two days.

The report is the first such report in recent months.

In May, the Guard rejected the US Navy's claim that fast-approaching Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz sparked a tense encounter a day after the US said the Revolutionary Guard sent 13 armed speedboats too close to US Navy vessels in the Strait.

The United States at the time said a Coast Guard cutter fired warning shots when two of the Iranian boats came dangerously close.

The 2015 nuclear deal saw Tehran drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. In 2018, under then-US President Donald Trump, the US withdrew from the accord.

With the talks in Vienna now stalled, Iran has breached limits set by the accord and is enriching uranium to its closest-ever levels to weapons-grade purity as its stockpile continues to grow.

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The cargo ship, "Artenos," set sail from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in the country's south on Oct. 6 and crossed the Suez Canal on Oct. 14, arriving in Syria at 2 a.m. Thursday morning.

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The company allegedly operating the Iranian ship, Omid Darya, is currently placed on a sanctions list by the US Treasury Department for supposedly providing maritime services to the Iranian government.

Could the reported attack on an Iranian-owned oil tanker be a false flag? 'Impossible to tell at this point,' @AcrossTheBay tells @DerrickeDennis, but 'not out of the question that #Iran would use this as a pretext for something ugly.': pic.twitter.com/wffqWYp5kz

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 12, 2019

Bandar Abbas port is known as a commercial hub for the shipping of advanced technologies and is considered an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps stronghold.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS.

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Neither the Revolutionary Guards nor a subsequent announcement on state television explained how authorities detained Ruhollah Zam, who ran a website called AmadNews that posted embarrassing videos and information about Iranian officials.

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The Revolutionary Guards said Zam, who had been living and working in exile in Paris, was "guided into the country" before the arrest. His channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram was apparently also taken hold of, as a message noting his arrest went out to its 1 million subscribers.

An announcement on state television referred to Zam "special prey." It said his detention was a victory of the Revolutionary Guard's intelligence department over Western services.

The report described Zam as the head of a psychological warfare network operated by Iran's enemies. The Revolutionary Guards alleged Zam was supported by the intelligence services of the US, France, and Israel, something the journalist has long denied. French officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

In 2017, Zam's Telegram channel spread messages about upcoming protests and shared videos from the demonstrations, which were held across some 75 cities and towns. Telegram shut the channel down following Iranian government complaints it had spread information about how to make Molotov cocktails. The channel later operated under a different name.

It's hard to overstate the power of Telegram in Iran. Of its 80 million residents, an estimated 40 million use the free app.

While authorities have banned social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and censor others, Telegram users can say nearly anything on the app. In the last presidential election, the app played a major role in motivating turnout and spreading political messages.

Zam, 46, was previously detained following the disputed 2009 re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Zam is the son of Shiite cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, a reformist who once served in a government policy position in the early 1980s. In July 2017, Zam's cleric father wrote a letter published by Iranian media in which he said he wouldn't support his son over AmadNews' reporting and messages on its Telegram channel.

"I found that you crossed the red line," his father wrote, referring to comments the channel circulated about Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Our red line is the supreme leader, but you crossed the red line."

Meanwhile, Iran's president said his country was prepared to begin using even more-advanced centrifuges as its nuclear deal with world powers unravels.

Hassan Rouhani announced his nation would begin working with advanced IR-9 centrifuges. Although it is unclear what those centrifuges can do, Iran has a host of advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium more rapidly than those allowed under the accord.

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"Iran has the highest level of defense-military preparedness to confront any type of threat and excessive demands," Defense Minister Amir Hatami was quoted as saying by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

He said Iran would defeat a U.S. and Israel alliance.

The United States has sent additional military forces to the Middle East, including an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers and Patriot missiles, in a show of force against what U.S. officials say are Iranian threats to its troops and interests in the region.

The commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said: "We are on the cusp of a full-scale confrontation with the enemy," the Fars news agency reported.

Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, named head of the force last month, added: "This moment in history, because the enemy has stepped into the field of confrontation with us with all the possible capacity, is the most decisive moment of the Islamic revolution."

Separately on Wednesday, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran was ready for any possible scenario from "confrontation to diplomacy" but the U.S. could not afford another war in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, Washington ordered non-emergency government employees stationed in Iraq to leave the region over repeated concerns about danger posed by Iranian-backed forces.

Israel will stand with the United States to confront Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

"We are united in our desire to stop Iranian aggression," he said. "Israel and all the countries of the region and all the countries who seek peace in the world should stand together with the United States against Iranian aggression."

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The force said on Wednesday a suicide bomber driving a vehicle laden with explosives had attacked a bus transporting members of the Guards in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

A militant Sunni Muslim group, Jaish al Adl (Army of Justice), which says it seeks greater rights and better living conditions for the ethnic minority Baluchis, has claimed responsibility for the attack, Iranian media have reported.

"The crime will remain as a 'dirty stain' in the black record of the main supporters of terrorism in the White House, Tel Aviv and their regional agents," Rouhani said.

Apart from Israel, Rouhani did not name the regional states he believed were to blame. Mainly Shiite Muslim Iran does not recognize Israel, which is a key U.S. ally in the region and sees Tehran as posing an existential threat to its existence.

The heavy losses among Iran's premier military force prompted a senior Revolutionary Guards commander to issue a warning to the country's foes.

"Our response in defense of the Islamic Revolution will not be limited to our borders," Ali Fadavi was quoted as saying by Fars.

"The enemies will receive a very firm response from the Revolutionary Guards like before." He did not specify which enemies or what actions Tehran would take.

In the past, Iran has accused its regional rival, Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia, of supporting Sunni separatist groups who have attacked its security forces. Riyadh has denied the charges.

Iran's Shiite Muslim authorities say militant groups operate from safe havens in Pakistan and have repeatedly called on the neighboring country to crack down on them.

While Sunni terrorist groups are not regarded as a major threat, the attack dealt a fresh blow to Iran's security establishment, which has often said it can repel any threat no matter how big, even from the United States and its ally Israel.

The assault in impoverished Sistan-Baluchistan province illustrated that Iran's elite force, which answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can be vulnerable to guerrilla-style operations.

The Guards' estimated 125,000-strong military, with army, navy and air units, has acted as the sword and shield of Shiite clerical rule in Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The force also operates outside of Iran's borders in countries such as Iraq and Syria where it works with proxies to promote Tehran's interest. It runs a business empire in Iran worth billions of dollars.

"The self-sacrificing military and intelligence children of the people of Iran will take revenge for the blood of the martyrs of this incident," Fars quoted Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi as saying.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appeared to blame the United States for the attack, citing a U.S.-sponsored conference in Warsaw aimed at rallying support to further isolate Iran.

On Twitter he asked: "Is it no coincidence that Iran is hit by terror on the very day that #WarsawCircus begins?"

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Ending a long absence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the region, the USS John C. Stennis entered the Persian Gulf last week and was shadowed by the Revolutionary Guards' speedboats.

There have been periodic confrontations between the Revolutionary Guards vessels and U.S. military in the Gulf, although the number of incidents has dropped in recent months.

"We are trying to increase the agility of the Guards' speedboats and equip them with stealth technology to facilitate their operations," Alireza Tangsiri, the Revolutionary Guards' navy chief, was quoted as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Tangsiri also said the speedboats will be equipped with new missiles and their speed will reach 80 knots (92 miles per hour).

He did not elaborate on whether Iran had already mastered these technologies or if they were still in the study phase.

Iran says it has been developing its own stealth technology for fighter jets and vessels, but the prototypes it has unveiled in recent years have mostly been met with derision by defense experts.

The Revolutionary Guards last week launched war games in the Gulf, through which a third of the world's sea-borne oil passes, and warned that its forces were ready to respond to any hostile U.S. action.

In an indirect threat to Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the region, the head of the Iranian armed forces warned that any Iranian confrontation with U.S. forces might also target Gulf nations that he said had invited them into the region.

"Iran's regional enemies should know that alongside a pacifist doctrine, Iran has a powerful military force that are ready to protect Iran's territorial integrity, and also hold accountable countries that proposed [the U.S. presence]," Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.

A U.S.-Iranian war of words has escalated since U.S. President Donald Trump took Washington out of a world powers' nuclear deal with Iran in May, and reimposed sanctions on its banking and energy sectors.

Iran has warned that if it cannot sell its oil due to U.S. pressure, then no other regional country will be allowed to do so either, threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.

The Guards' naval arm lacks a strong conventional fleet. However, it has many speedboats and portable anti-ship missile launchers and can lay mines.

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"They are within our reach and we can hit them if they [the Americans] make a move," Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace division, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Hajizadeh said the IRGC had improved the precision of its missiles, and specifically said they could hit the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al-Dhafra base in the United Arab Emirates and Kandahar base in Afghanistan that host U.S. forces.

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran's nuclear program in May and reimposed sanctions on Tehran. He said the deal was flawed because it did not include curbs on Iran's development of ballistic missiles or its support for proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.

The Islamic republic has ruled out negotiations with Washington over its military capabilities, particularly its missile program run by the IRGC.

Iran, which says its missile program is purely defensive, has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if the United States tries to strangle Iranian oil exports.

In October, the IRGC fired missiles at Islamic State terrorists in Syria after the Islamist group took responsibility for an attack at a military parade in Iran that killed 25 people, nearly half of them members of the Guards.

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Saudi state news agency SPA quoted a statement from the country's security services saying the directive includes Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and senior IRGC officials Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai.

A Revolutionary Guards officer said that the move by Riyadh and Manama intended to "distract the world and the region from the killing of Jamal Khashoggi," an exiled Saudi journalist whose disappearance after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has sparked international outrage.

"Saudi Arabia is in a quagmire it cannot easily come out of … Saudi rulers are trying to distract the world and the region from the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, in their consulate in Turkey," Brig. Gen. Esmail Kowsari told the Mehr news agency.

"Saudi leaders should be held accountable for their actions," he said.

The U.S. Treasury Department alleged in 2011 that Soleimani, Abdollahi and Shahlai were linked to a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's former ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, and imposed sanctions on them.

Iran at the time dismissed the accusations as false and demanded an apology from Washington.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday dismissed Saudi Arabia's explanations of Khashoggi's death and demanded it punish those responsible, no matter how highly placed.

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury targeted Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency with sanctions against eight individuals who were designated global terrorists, including two linked to the Quds Force named as Mohammad Ebrahim Owhadi and Esma'il Razavi.

The Taliban-related sanctions were also imposed by the seven members of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, a U.S.-Gulf initiative to stem finance to militant groups.

The Trump administration aims to create a security and political alliance with the Sunni Gulf Arab states to counter Iran's influence in the region, especially in Syria and Iraq.

Saudi Arabia welcomed Trump's decision and said it would work with the United States to address Iran's support of militant groups in the region and its ballistic missile program, which is run by the Revolutionary Guards.

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"We have managed to make land-to-sea ballistic, not cruise, missiles that can hit any vessel or ship from 700 kilometers," Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Airspace Division, was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 international agreement on Iran's nuclear program in May and reimposed sanctions on Iran, saying that one of the deal's major flaws is that it does not include curbs on Iran's development of ballistic missiles or its support for proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.

Iran, which says its missile program is purely defensive, has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf if the United States tries to strangle Iranian oil exports.

Hajizadeh said the Guards began focusing on extending the land-to-sea missile range after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked the military a decade ago about the possibility of "hitting ships" with ballistic missiles.

He did not give details on the previous range of the missiles. In 2008, Iran displayed a ground-to-sea missile that it said could travel about 290 kilometers (180 miles).

On Monday, U.S. special envoy on Iran Brian Hook said the Iranian ballistic missile program was exacerbating tensions in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

"We are accumulating risk of regional conflict if we do not do more to deter Iran's missile proliferation in the Middle East," Hook said.

The Iranian government has ruled out negotiating with Washington over its military capabilities and has dismissed U.S. assertions that its activities in the Middle East are destabilizing.

Hajizadeh said some short-range Iranian missiles had been used over the past two years in Syria's civil war, where Iranian forces have fought in support of President Bashar Assad.

He also said Iranian drones had carried out 700 attacks on Islamic State positions in Syria.

The Revolutionary Guards have sent weapons and thousands of soldiers to Syria to help shore up Assad during the long conflict there.

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Khamenei urged President Hassan Rouhani not to rely too much on European support as he comes under increased pressure at home over his handling of the economy in the face of US sanctions, with key ministers under attack by parliament.

Following the US pullout from the international accord on May 8, European powers have been scrambling to ensure Iran continues to get the economic benefits it needs to keep it in the deal, which had aimed to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But in comments published on his official website, Khamenei told Rouhani and his cabinet on Wednesday: "There is no problem with negotiations and keeping contact with the Europeans, but you should give up hope on them over economic issues or the nuclear deal.

"The nuclear deal is a means, not the goal, and if we come to this conclusion that it does not serve our national interests, we can abandon it."

After President Donald Trump announced the US pullout in May, Khamenei set out a series of conditions for European powers to keep Iran in the deal. These included steps by European banks to safeguard trade with Iran and guarantee Iranian oil sales.

Speaking at the cabinet meeting, Khamenei said Iran would not negotiate with "indecent and confrontational" US officials to reach a new agreement on its nuclear program because the US "wants to boast they managed to bring Iran to the negotiation table."

Khamenei told Rouhani and his cabinet to work "day and night" to solve Iran's mounting economic problems, which include the collapse of the rial currency and surging unemployment.

But at the same time, he appeared to call on the parliament not to press too hard on Rouhani, who has been severely grilled over the economic performance. He said Iranian officials should unite against US pressure since publicizing differences would only make the nation more unhappy.

Rouhani won two landslide elections on a platform of economic reform and opening Iran up to the outside world, and his pragmatic supporters have a majority in the parliament.

But his reputation and political influence have taken a sharp hit as his promised economic gains have failed to materialize and US sanctions have begun to bite.

Washington has imposed sanctions on the acquisition of U.S. dollars by Iran and it will reimpose sanctions on Iranian oil exports and the banking sector in November.

Iran's official unemployment rate is 12%, with youth unemployment as high as 25%. Some 60% of Iran's 80 million people are under 30. The rial has lost more than two-thirds of its value in a year.

Iran's parliament voted on Tuesday to reject Rouhani's explanations for economic hardship, a sign his pragmatic faction is losing sway to hard-line rivals as new U.S. sanctions bite deeper.

The worst may yet lie ahead as senior US officials have said they aim to reduce Iran's oil exports to zero after the new round of sanctions in November.

Iran has said if it cannot sell its oil due to US pressure, then no other regional country will be allowed to do so either, and has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for shipping Persian Gulf oil to the world.

A senior Iranian military official said on Wednesday that if foreign forces in the Persian Gulf do not follow international laws, they will face the Revolutionary Guards' "firm response."

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