[Fox News] Iran appears to have built a fake aircraft carrier off its southern coast for potential live-fire drills amid ongoing tensions with the U.S., satellite images showed Tuesday."By Allan, we will destroy our plywood replica!"
The apparent mock-up resembles the Nimitz-class carriers that the U.S. Navy routinely sails into the Persian Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of all the world's oil passes through.
While not yet acknowledged by Iranian officials, the replica's appearance suggests Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is preparing an encore of a similar mock-sinking it conducted in 2015.
The replica's appearance comes as Iran announced Tuesday it will execute a man it accused of sharing details on the movements of the Guard's Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S.-authorized drone strike in Baghdad earlier this year.
The replica carries 16 mock-ups of fighter jets on its deck, according to satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies. The vessel appears to be some 650 feet long and 160 feet wide.
The mock-up, which defense and intelligence analysts first noticed in January, resembles a similar one used in February 2015 during a military exercise called "Great Prophet 9." During that drill, Iran swarmed the fake aircraft carrier with speedboats firing machine guns and rockets. Surface-to-sea missiles later targeted and destroyed the fake carrier.