By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

For a country with a long coastline on the high seas, the navy plays a vital part, both in safeguarding national sovereignty through state-of-the-art military vessels to protect the marine and land borders, and in ensuring thriving trade relations with the world through a modernized merchant fleet for long trips and capable of safeguarding cargoes against possible piracy and the terrorism of evil powers.
In view of this fact, Iran has rapidly upgraded its naval forces and equipped them with sophisticated means of defence, while holding at regular intervals sea drills to test their prowess.
Currently the Islamic Republic is conducting such exercises in the international waters stretching from the Gulf of Oman to the northern parts of the Indian Ocean in collaboration with two of the world’s leading maritime powers – Russia and China.
The Iranian navy, which before the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 consisted of some second-grade ships bought from the US and European states, although it wiped out the navy of another client state (Saddam’s Iraq), in the early days of the 8-year US imposed war of the 1980s, it had a poor performance when attacked in the Persian Gulf by the Americans who were well aware of the limited techniques of the vessels they had sold to the Pahlavi regime.
That is a thing of the past. Now the Islamic Republic manufactures its own high class vessels, both military and merchant, equipped with the most advanced defence (and if necessary offence) technology at a par with the world’s leading naval powers, and in many cases more powerful than what they have been able to manufacture.
This is the reason the enemies are apprehensive of Iran’s growing naval power and in order to improve this prowess the Islamic Republic holds sea exercises with friendly countries, since Tehran wants peace for all, and doesn’t provoke others as the US and the neo-colonialist European countries do to disturb international maritime security.
As part of this policy, Iran has invited representatives from the navies of Oman, India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and South Africa act as observers.
The main participants of course, are Iran a grouping of ships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet, led by the Varyag cruiser, and China’s guided-missile destroyer Urumqi, guided-missile frigate Linyi and comprehensive supply ship Dongpinghu.
Dubbed “Maritime Security Belt – 2024”, these exercises are aimed at jointly maintaining regional maritime security.
Three of the Iranian manufactured warships, recently added to Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) naval fleet, are taking part – the Martyr Mahmoudi, the Martyr Soleimani, and the Martyr Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with the Tondar-class Martyr Tavassoli frigate, as well as maritime helicopters and marines.
The exercise features a variety of tactical maneuvers such as rescuing vessels on fire, liberating hijacked merchant vessels, striking designated targets, conducting night aerial target operations, and other tactical and operational drills.
It should be noted that the Iranian navy which recently completed a round-the-world trip and has active plans for setting up a research base in Antarctica in the South Pole, plays a vital role in safeguarding the security of regional waters.