More to the point, where exactly are they going to bunker up and exchange crew and such? Cuba? Having them meet a sub tender vessel basically negates their value, since at that point you can just shadow them from there.
Why shouldn’t they put warships off the US coast?
It’s not like they’ve ever shot down an American airliner in American airspace, like, say, the way that the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner in Iranian airspace.
Goose, Gander. Pot, Kettle.
If someone says they “can’t” (as in having permission), I missed it.
The main question was: Do they have the technical ability?
They’re certainly welcome to do so, if they want to waste a lot of money on something that’s not even a decent show of force and will make them an international laughingstock, again.
Sure, why wouldn’t they ?
Maybe because the only significant operational experience the Iranian Navy has had in the last ten years has been with boghammer-style boats. Pretty big jump in technology from those to even an old diesel-electric sub.
Hell, they may have war games every month between a sub and a destroyer, and the guys who lose get beaten with canes.
They may have been practicing sneaking into Iraqi waters ever since the war.
They can practice all they want, but it doesn’t change basic logistics. Iran has a few Kilo-class boats and several tiny (400t or smaller) gulf patrol submarines. Only the Kilos can even conceivably do long-range operations.
Now some facts: the Kilo can only go 7,500 miles and that’s at max endurance conditions (doing 7 knots, where it can be spotted on radar/sonar when it’s snorkeling). It also has a max supply storage of 45 days, which means it’s gotta hit a port or a tender once a month (because no navy is going to let it get down to the wire on any sane operation), and at least once on the way over here. When it does so, someone is GOING to see it either with satellite or with local intel assets. Bam, we know where it is and can shadow it. After all, our big problems with the Soviet diesel boats in wargames was that we couldn’t be too obvious about it because they stayed on their side of the pond–the Sovs mostly deployed them close-in.
The Iranians? Under our continental air cover (and “places under our continental air cover” includes the entire Atlantic and the Med at this point, since Europe doesn’t want these guys fucking about in the sea lanes either) and in our shipping lanes, we can active-ping their asses 24/7 with little few repercussions.
I was commenting on whether they could keep the boat quiet, not whether they could find North America. 
Just imagine how embarassing that would be if they missed it entirely
Now that I think of it, they don’t have any destroyers to practice against either, just a bunch of ultralight frigates with high-frequency (i.e., very short range) hull sonars. 
My non-naval expert opinion for an appropriate response would be to pretty much visibly ignore the Iranian craft near our waters, and in response double down on our assets visibly parked near their waters. That should send the message that their navy would be much better off sticking close to home.
But they do have subs to play against, which are better at picking subs than destroyers anyway. Not that Kilos have the most impressive of sonar suites (don’t even have a towed array), but it’s a start.
While that’s true, you hit on the key point–they have ultralight frigates and subs to practice against, but it’d be the equivalent of practicing against a junior league cricket team in preparation to face the Yankees–the technology is different and the Iranian Navy is bush league. Nothing they can field will match the experience or tactics needed to evade P-3s, Perry-class frigs, Burke-class cans, and Los Angeles-class subs.
There’s a reason we trained against the best other first-world nations and practiced shadowing Soviet equipment any time we could, rather than farting around in our home waters, after all.
Maybe they’d find the quick route to India’s spice ports that Columbus missed!
Yes and no. Obviously they lack any sort of data that would allow them to determine how far any of those can pick a Kilo up in so and so sea conditions at so and so range ; but sub-on-sub exercises can at least tell them precisely what does or doesn’t make noise, which RPMs are safest at which depth, why angles & dangles are important etc…, in other words the kind of groundwork** bump **dismisses as stuff these backward savages would hardly ever grasp, by Jove (British imperialist vocabulary inserted by me of course, but I’m sure I’m not alone in figuring that was the subtext of his comment).
IOW, they absolutely have the potential to run their boats as quiet as humanely possible. Whether that’s enough, or the tactical/strategical framework within which they operate the boats is sound is admittedly another story.