NEW YORK (Dispatches) -- In the last three years, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy has commissioned hundreds of new vessels. Most are newer variants of the missile, rocket, and heavy machine-gun-clad speedboats that have long formed the backbone of the IRGCN’s fleet, but beginning in 2022, the IRGCN began commissioning new classes of warships capable of operating on the high seas, U.S. news website Business Insider wrote.
The vessels, four newly designed missile-armed catamaran corvettes and a container ship converted into an expeditionary sea base, bring new capabilities to the force, giving Iran options to keep adversaries with advanced navies and air forces like the U.S. off-balance, it added.
The largest ships ever to be commissioned into its service, the vessels enable the IRGCN to operate major surface combatants with long-range anti-ship and anti-air weapons, and also helps the historically littoral force to pursue a new mission only recently given to it: to project power into the high seas via expeditionary operations.
With a fourth catamaran missile corvette on the way and another container ship being converted into a drone carrier, the IRGCN’s future fleet is gaining the larger ships and firepower needed to confront its adversaries beyond the Persian Gulf, it added.
Founded in 1985, the IRGCN is the naval branch of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, that operates separate from the national military.
Numbering around 25,000 personnel, in 2007, the IRGCN was tasked with the security of the Persian Gulf, while Iran’s national navy was given responsibility for the waters of the inland Caspian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and beyond. Responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth that dog-legs into the Persian Gulf, is shared between the two forces.
Since its inception, the IRGCN has employed an asymmetric doctrine that utilizes swarm and guerilla tactics with an emphasis on numbers, speed, mobility, and geographical advantages.  
Operating in conjunction with Iran’s land-based missiles and aircraft, the IRGCN can mount rapid sea assaults that exploit the islands and contours of Iran’s coast, Business Insider said. 
“They rely extensively on hundreds of smaller vessels, namely fast attack craft (FAC) and fast inshore attack craft (FAIC) like those of the Tondar and Peykaap-classes which are armed with heavy machine guns, rockets, anti-ship missiles, and torpedoes to swarm enemy warships that may also be under attack from loitering munitions,” it said.
On September 5, 2022, the IRGCN diverged from its usual procurement practices when it commissioned the Shahid Soleimani, the lead ship of a new class of corvettes named after the leader of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force who was martyred in a U.S. drone strike in 2020. At 213 feet long, 47 feet wide, and displacing an estimated 600 tons, it is one of the largest surface combatants the IRGCN has ever adopted.
The class utilizes a unique twin-hulled catamaran design. The design offers increased speed and stability at the expense of volume to carry more fuel or armaments. Though rare for frontline warships, some major navies do possess catamaran corvettes, including China, Russia, Taiwan, and Norway.
The IRGCN itself has been operating a single catamaran called the Shahid Nazeri since 2016.  
But while Shahid Nazeri has few armaments, the Soleimani-class corvettes are the most heavily armed vessels in the IRGCN fleet, with an armament of 28 missiles, four 23mm Gatling guns (two in front of the bridge and two amidships), and one 30mm auto-cannon at the bow. Their formidable missile armaments are designed to counter ships and aircraft.
Twenty-two of the missiles are stored in vertical launch systems (VLS), making the Soleimanis the first vessels in Iranian service with vertical launch capability. Believed to all house surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), they are arranged in two groups of eleven cells (eight small and three large) on the port and starboard sides just behind the bridge.
The six large cells are believed to house medium-range SAMs with a range of 92 miles each, while the sixteen small cells are believed to house short-range SAMs. Six box launchers amidships (three on each side) house anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs); likely four long-range ASCMs like the Ghadir or Noor, with ranges of 184 and 74 miles, respectively, and two short-range ASCMs like the Nasr, which has a range of 21 miles.
A helicopter deck is located just behind the box launchers and mast. Below it is a hangar reportedly large enough for three IRGCN FIACs; these fast inshore attack boats can be lowered into the water and picked up by an internal crane.
Made out of aluminum, Iranian officials have said that the ships have a range of 5,500 nautical miles. They have also said that the catamaran layout provides stability in rough seas and reduces the ships’

 radar cross-sections, making them harder to detect and track.
Three Soleimani-class corvettes, Shahid Soleimani, Shahid Hassan Bagheri, and Shahid Sayyad Shirazi, have been commissioned, while a fourth, Shahid Ra’is-Ali Delvari, is under construction. One month before the Hassan Bagheri and Sayyad Sirazi’s commissioning last February, the IRGCN commissioned a new type of catamaran corvette, the Shahid Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
At 157 feet long, 39 feet wide, and displacing around 300 tons, it is smaller than the Shahid Soleimani-class and vastly different in appearance; it has no internal hangar capable of holding FAICs, no VLS cells, and the landing deck behind the bridge appears to be too small for helicopters, likely meaning it is intended for drones.
Its armament consists of 14 missiles; six ASCMs stored in box launchers at the stern and eight more ASCMs in two quad-tubed launchers on the port and starboard sides. It is also equipped with four 23mm Gatling guns and one 30mm auto-cannon.
Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the IRGCN, described the Shahid Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis as an “invisible boat” because of its catamaran design, and said it had a range of 2,300 miles.
Though the newest, the catamaran corvettes are not the first sea-faring vessels the IRGCN has operated. The service has unofficially operated the cargo ships MV Saviz and the MV Behshad which are used as forward base and command ships to gather intelligence.  
In 2020, the IRGCN commissioned its first official sea-going vessel, the Shahid Roudaki. A converted roll-on/roll-off ship, the Shahid Roudaki is capable of carrying FAICs, drones, and military vehicles, and has space for a helicopter on its deck. It is armed with four ASCM box launchers and is believed to play an intelligence-gathering and support role.
Roudaki was briefly the largest ship in the IRGCN fleet until March 2023, when the IRGC  commissioned the Shahid Mahdavi, a converted container ship formerly known as Sarvin.
At 787 feet long and 105 feet wide, Mahdavi’s role is that of an expeditionary sea base and support/mothership. Equipped with a phased array radar and capable of carrying two helicopters, drones, loitering munitions like the Shahed-136, and FAICs, Mahdavi can also be used as a base from which IRGCN special forces can be inserted, and act as an intelligence-gathering vessel.
It is often compared to the U.S. Navy’s Lewis B. Puller-class expeditionary mobile bases, the lead ship of which has spent ample time in the Persian Gulf in view of Iranian forces.
Iran’s navy has a similar vessel, the IRINS Makran, a forward base ship converted from an oil tanker. Commissioned in 2021, it has conducted multiple long-range voyages, including one that saw it circumnavigate the globe.
Mahdavi made international headlines in February when it launched two ballistic missiles from shipping containers placed on its deck as part of the Great Prophet 18 military exercise. Fired from the Gulf of Oman, the missiles were reported to have successfully hit mock targets in a desert in central Iran, demonstrating an at-sea launch capability for Iran’s ballistic missiles.
The ship again made headlines in May when it sailed into the Southern Hemisphere, proving definitively that the IRGCN’s reach now extends to the high seas.
Mahdavi will eventually be joined by another converted container ship, the Shahid Bagheri. Formerly known as the Perarin, the vessel has been undergoing conversion into a drone carrier for the IRGCN since 2021.
Measuring 787 feet long, the ship’s width has been increased slightly with the addition of a cantilever deck on its port side. In 2023, a ski-jump ramp was fitted to the bow at an angle toward the starboard side in line with the cantilever deck, suggesting that wheeled drones will take off and land by avoiding the ship’s towering superstructure that houses the bridge.
“The makeup of Bagheri’s future unmanned air wing remains a matter of speculation, and could include Shahed 171 and 191s (which are reverse-engineered Iranian copies of a captured American RQ-170 Sentinel), or Mohajer-6 and Shahed 129 drones, all of which can reportedly be used as reconnaissance and strike platforms,” Business Insider wrote.
The Bagheri’s flight deck measures about 590 feet. The main recovery method for the drones will likely be an arrestor net or cable system of some type, though drones with short takeoff and landing ability may be able to conventionally land in calm seas.
Like the Mahdavi, Bagheri could also be used as a launch platform for loitering munitions like one-way attack drones. In addition, Rear Adm. Tangsiri has said that Bagheri will be able to store 30 FAICs below its deck.
The IRGCN’s new warships come with a mandate to expand well beyond the speedboat and fast attack operations that have characterized much of its operations in the Persian Gulf.
Altogether, the ships represent radical upgrades for the IRGCN — upgrades that the force has desperately wanted.
Now sailing with large surface combatants armed with anti-air and anti-ship missiles, as well as new FIACs with better anti-ship and anti-air capabilities, the IRGCN is a more capable force than it was in the 1980s.
“They know they are going on missions that require defense against aerial threats as well as surface threats, so they have to be prepared to defend against those threats by themselves,” Farzin Nadimi, a senior defense fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told Insider.
But the IRGCN’s new ships are not just intended for protecting the Persian Gulf — they are also for helping the IRGCN in its new mission: Projecting its power into the high seas.
Previously a mission reserved for Iran’s national navy, this expansion of duty was ordered by Ayatollah Khamenei himself in 2020. Iranian officials often talk about how the ships will better secure Iran’s maritime interests.
“In general, they have portrayed their new mission as protecting the safety and security of Iran’s vital maritime routes,” Nadimi said.
In the event that Iranian forces need supplies, the new catamaran corvettes “would be able to escort Iranian ships, tankers, or cargo ships that carry important cargoes,” Nadimi said. The Mahdavi and Bagheri, converted container ships themselves, could even carry the cargo and deliver it directly.
The IRGCN’s new ships are official vessels of the Islamic Republic. “By law they are sovereign territory of Iran,” Nadimi said. “They have the threat of serious escalation behind them if Israel directly attacks them.”
The ships can also serve Iran’s possible tactical goals as well. As a mobile sea-based ballistic missile launch platform with a long range, the Mahdavi poses a particularly potent capability. An IRGCN surface group made up of the Soleimanis, Madhavi, and Bagheri may even be able to counter U.S. bombers based in Diego Garcia, an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Insider said.
With Bagheri finishing construction and a fourth Soleimani-class catamaran being built, the IRGCN’s fleet is only expected to get larger as it embraces its new high-seas mission.
“Our oceangoing warships can be present in every location across the world, and when we can fire missiles from them, there is accordingly no safe spot for anyone intending to create insecurity for us,” Tangsiri said after the successful missile launches from Mahdavi.