The Iranian Navy has been working on positioning itself as a blue water navy for a decade and a half or so. They frequently operate outside the Straits of Hormuz and regularly travel to India, China, through the Red Sea and Suez and into the Med. The last time I was in CENTCOM they were running "Anti pirate and freedom of navigation patrols" in the Gulf of Aden and Red sea pretty continuously.
Remember, Iran functionally has two Navys. The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, which has most of the frigates, auxiliary's, all the subs, and some smaller boats, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, which has two missile corvettes, some amphibs and landing craft and mostly a *expletive deleted*it ton of missile carrying speed boats. They are completely separate organizations, with a separate chain of command, and are very different to deal with in the ocean. The IRGCN tends to be the one you need to worry about being aggressive and trying to start wars. It's also the IRGC not the Iranian Military that funds militant groups like the Houthis.
Which is a long-winded way of saying this boat, or one like it is pretty routinely operating in that area, doing that mission, and there's nothing intrinsically more threatening about this mission than the last 30 times the IRIN transited the Red Sea. Fox News is breathlessly reporting a common occurrence as if it were new.
Now if you start to see the IRGCN Missile Corvettes or Peykaap class torpedo boats transiting the Straits and heading to the Red Sea, something might be up.
