TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran on Friday began large-scale naval drills at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which will feature its first submarine cruise missile launches.
More than 100 vessels were taking part in the three-day war games in a vast area stretching from the Strait of Hormuz to the Indian Ocean, the state news agency IRNA reported.
"The exercise will cover confronting a range of threats, testing weapons, and evaluating the readiness of equipment and personnel,” Navy commander Rear Admiral Hussein Khanzadi said.
"Submarine missile launches will be carried out ... in addition to helicopter and drone launches from the deck of the Sahand destroyer,” Khanzadi said.
News agencies said Iran would be testing its new domestically built Fateh (Conqueror) submarine which is armed with cruise missiles and was launched last week.
Officials in the past have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route, in retaliation for any hostile U.S. action, including attempts to halt Iranian oil exports through sanctions.
U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program last May and reimposed sanctions on Tehran. He said the deal was flawed because it did not include curbs on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles or its role in the Middle East.
Iran has expanded its missile program, particularly its ballistic missiles.
Iran launched its domestically made destroyer Sahand in December, which official say has radar-evading stealth properties.
The USS John C. Stennis entered the Persian Gulf in December, ending a long absence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the strategic waterway.
Iran displayed a new cruise surface-to-surface missile with a range of 1,300 km (800 miles) earlier this month during celebrations marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) penetrated a command center of the U.S. Army and took control of several American unnamed aerial vehicles (UAVs) which were constantly flying over Syria and Iraq, IRGC Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh revealed on Thursday.
"Seven to eight drones that had constant flights over Syria and Iraq were brought under our control and their intel was monitored by us and we could gain their first-hand intel,” Fars News quoted the IRGC general as saying.
The Iranian news agency released several videos which the IRGC managed to extract from U.S. UAVs flying over Syria and Iraq. One of the videos shows a drone malfunctioning after being penetrated by the IRGC than making a rough landing in a desert area 10 kilometers away from its base. The UAV was later destroyed by a U.S. warplane.
Iran grounded a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle RQ-170 Sentinel in December 2011 using electronic warfare techniques, as the stealth aircraft was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar near the Afghan border.
Back in November 2018, General Hajizadeh highlighted the Islamic Republic’s drone intelligence, saying Iran now knows in which hangar of the Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan the RQ-170 had been deployed.
According to the IRGC Aerospace commander, Iran used the reverse-engineered version of the RQ-170 drone to target Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq.
Iran currently possesses the biggest collection of captured or downed American and Israeli drones, including the U.S.' MQ1, MQ9, Shadow, ScanEagle, and RQ-170 as well as the Israeli regime's Hermes, Hajizadeh added.
The Israeli drone was intercepted and shot down in October 2014 by IRGC forces on its way to the Natanz nuclear facility in the central Isfahan province.
In the field of unmanned aerial vehicles, Iran is now one of the world’s top four or five countries, and the top drone power in the region, General Hajizadeh said.
"The Iranian-made Shahed-129 drone, for example, had round-the-clock flights over terrorists’ positions in Syria and Iraq, and its services were also used by the Syrian army, the Russians, the Hezbollah forces, and others,” he added.
Iran's UAV program has expanded in recent years with more than a dozen models operating for a variety of functions ranging from surveillance to intelligence gathering, carrying bombs and Kamikaze operations.  
They have been playing a significant role in the fight against Takfiri terrorists as well as monitoring U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.