TEHRAN – The Iranian army on Monday held the second day of a massive maneuver, deploying artillery, choppers and combat UAVs to take down mock enemy targets.
The navy also sent its homegrown Tareq and Qadir submarines, which fired torpedoes against surface and subsurface targets in the Sea of Oman and sea-launched cruise missiles to destroy hypothetical enemy vessels in its southwestern waters.
Dubbed Zolfaqar-1400, the massive drill started on Sunday with surface and subsurface vessels, air and naval flights, radars and missile systems.
Held over a million square kilometer area stretching from the Strait of Hormuz to the Sea of Oman and north of the Indian Ocean, the military exercise seeks to upgrade Iran’s capability in defending its territorial waters, while sending a message to foreign actors that they are not welcome in the region.
In recent years, the Iranian armed forces have displayed a range of homegrown military equipment in annual maneuvers as a show of might to the country’s adversaries.
The military says more than 80-percent of the used hardware is built domestically, sending a message to the west that their arms bans have prompted Iran to stand on its own feet and indigenize its defense arsenal.
The ultimate message of this drill is that Iran’s army has the power to defend its borders. And what’s even more significant is that it does so using entirely indigenous weapons, something which defies decades of U.S. arms embargoes that denied Iran’s access to even a bullet from outside its borders.
Iran’s Navy commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said the Islamic Republic has “a lot to say” on the battlefield and will definitely give a crushing response to any disrespectful behavior toward the nation.
“We convey this message to all that whenever Iranians are spoken to with respect, [they] will certainly respond respectfully as well,” the commander said, adding that the Iranian nation will give a decisive response otherwise.
He noted that improving coordination among the Iranian armed forces and transferring the technical know-how to the young military forces are among the main objectives of the joint drills.
Admiral Irani pointed to the mission of the Iranian navy’s various fleets in the fight against terrorism, piracy, and escorting merchant ships and oil tankers, saying the naval forces have “fully secured the country’s economic lifeline by escorting vessels and tankers as well as merchant ships.”
Earlier this month, the Iranian naval forces managed to thwart a pirate attack on one of the country’s oil tankers en route to the Gulf of Aden before entering Bab el-Mandeb Strait.