Iran’s new naval commander has vowed to dispatch warships to the doorstep of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico, according to reports.

“Our fleet of warships will be sent to the Atlantic Ocean in the near future and will visit one of the friendly states in South America and the Gulf of Mexico,” Rear Adm. Hossein Khanzadi said, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Iran will likely use the warships’ visit to South America to advance its relationship with Venezuela, a US adversary, the outlet reported.

Khanzadi promised last week that his navy would “wave the flag of our country in the Gulf of Mexico,” NBC News reported.

He said “the appearance of our vessels in the Mediterranean and Suez Canal shocked the world and the US also made comments on it.”

While Iran’s naval forces pose no real threat when up against the US Navy, Khanzadi said that new vessels and submarines will be introduced next year to bolster the fleet.

This isn’t the first time Iran’s military has said it would send its ships into the Gulf of Mexico.

Khanzadi’s predecessor, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, said in 2014 that Iran planned to send ships near the US to counter the American presence in the Persian Gulf.

Sayyari later said the sailings had been canceled “due to a change in schedule.”

The US Navy’s 5th fleet is based in Bahrain across the Persian Gulf, where American and Iranian ships have clashed in recent years.

Iranian-born Mideast commentator Meir Javedanfar said that despite the plans to sail into America’s back yard, “it’s not clear if Iran is actually going to do it.”

“Making an announcement is very different than actually being able to carry out such a big and sophisticated task of sending Iranian ships all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” Javedanfar, a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, told The Jerusalem Post.

“And even if Iran succeeds I think it’s going to be mostly for show for domestic purposes. The Iranians have said that the Americans have no business being in the Persian Gulf and therefore maybe by doing this they are trying to reciprocate by saying that ‘just as you come to our backyard we can come to your back yard.’”