The torpedo tested yesterday, called the ''Hoot," or ''whale," could raise concerns over Iran's power in the Gulf, a vital corridor for the world's oil supplies and where the US Navy's Fifth Fleet is based. During Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iranian ships attacked oil tankers in the Gulf, and Iran and the US military engaged in limited clashes.
Iran's state television stopped its normal programs to break news of the torpedo test, showing it being launched from a ship into the Gulf waters, then hitting its target, a derelict ship.
General Ali Fadavi, deputy head of the Revolutionary Guard navy, said the ships that fire the Iranian-made Hoot had radar-evading technology and that the torpedo, moving at 223 miles per hour, was too fast to elude.
''It has a very powerful warhead designed to hit big submarines," Fadavi told state television. ''Even if enemy warship sensors identify the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed."
The Hoot's speed would make it about three or four times faster than a normal torpedo and as fast as the world's fastest known underwater missile, the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, developed in 1995. It was not immediately known whether the Hoot was based on the Shkval.
The new weapon gives Iran ''superiority" against any warship in the region, Fadavi said, in a veiled reference to US vessels in the Gulf. It was not immediately clear whether the torpedo can carry a nuclear warhead.
Commander Jeff Breslau, spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, said no special measures were taken in reaction to the Iranian war games, even after the latest missile test.
He would not comment on whether the new torpedo represents a threat to American forces in the region.
''In general terms, no matter where we operate in the world, we're aware of other capabilities that exist and of other countries that aren't as friendly to the US, and we pay attention to those capabilities," he said.
The US and Iranian navies have had brush-ups during the past -- during the ''Tanker War," when US warships moved into the Gulf to guard oil tankers.
