TEHRAN — Iran held joint naval, air, and ground exercises in the Persian Gulf on Friday near the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway.
The drills involve submarines and drones “practising information-gathering operations against attacking forces, as well as reconnaissance operations,” Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told the official IRNA news agency.
The exercises, codenamed Zolfaghar-1401, were launched overnight Friday in the eastern side of the strait in the Gulf of Oman.
“The Navy’s rangers used improved arms and equipment to carry out the operation and conducted modern tactics and defensive scenarios in the darkness of night,” Brigadier General Alireza Sheikh, spokesman of the drill, said.
“The operation lasted until dawn and the naval forces used Dehlavieh, TOW, and shoulder-fired Misagh missiles against the enemy’s aggression on coastal lines,” he said.
The forces managed to target the mock enemy’s positions using heavy artillery fire, preventing the enemy’s progress, added the spokesman.
Tehran, which opposes the presence of U.S. and Western navies in the area, holds annual war games in the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for some 30% of all crude oil traded by sea.
Sayyari said foreign forces must leave the area “so that regional countries can establish stability and peace in their neighborhood”.
Exercises involve infantry, armored and mechanized units of the ground forces, defense systems of the air defense force and subsurface and surface vessels, he said.
Naval forces with the support of “strategic bombers of the air force” are also taking part.
The massive drills will remind the regional states of the existing capacities and the fact that they do not need any foreign powers to ensure security in the region, Sayyari said, adding that the presence of extra-regional countries and warmongers has always brought nothing to the West Asia region but insecurity, war, and occupation.
Speaking to reporters on the sideline of the drills, commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid warned the enemies of any miscalculation against Iran.
“The Zionist regime is a military and security threat to all regional countries and Iran,” he said.
The commander cautioned regional countries of any cooperation with the occupying regime of Israel in threatening Iran’s national security by providing the occupying regime with bases or facilities. He warned that “those bases as well as the starting point of aggression against Iran which is the occupying regime will be the target of our armed forces’ attacks.”
Iranian armed forces are “serious” in conducting drills as they consider them a “half war” and even a “war before war,” he noted.
“By carrying out drills, we want the enemies to know that in case of any miscalculation, they will certainly face more costs compared to their achievements,” said the general.
He reminded extra-regional enemies that “our armed forces will fight with a hybrid force which will have a devastating power.”
Expounding on “hybrid force,” the commander said any miscalculation and aggression against Iran’s waters, islands, coasts, and facilities will not just be responded to by Iran’s Navy as “all the defensive and offensive power” of the Army, the IRGC, and regional forces will “crush the enemies in a joint and coordinated mission in a vast geographical area.”
During similar exercises last year, Iran’s military said it warned off two U.S. drones that overflew waters where the drills were being held.
In May, state television broadcast footage of an air base for drones under the western Zagros Mountain range.
Iran’s army unveiled its first division of ships and submarines capable of carrying armed drones in July when U.S. President Joe Biden was touring the Middle East.
In August, the army launched large-scale drone drills across the country involving 150 unmanned aerial vehicles.