Sahand Sails to Gulf of Eden on Maiden Voyage

Date: 26 August 2019 - 22:14

News ID: ۶۹۷۶۸

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran has dispatched its most advanced warship to protect its vessels around the Arabian Peninsula amid high tensions with the United States, a top military official announced on Monday.
Deputy coordinator of the Iranian Army Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told state media the new Sahand destroyer and several support vessels were deployed to "escort” Iranian vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman.
The Gulf of Oman is located east of the Persian Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for nearly a third of all oil traded by sea. The Gulf of Aden lies south of Yemen, and connects the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea.
Sayyari was quoted in Iran’s English-language Press TV as saying that it was the maiden voyage of the domestically-made Sahand, which joined the country’s naval fleet last December.
The flotilla is the 63rd Iranian naval group to be dispatched on overseas operation, he added.
The Sahand destroyer is equipped with sophisticated weapons and radar-evading technology. It was launched in late 2018 and is equipped with naval artillery and surface -to-surface missiles, as well as of a helicopter pad.
Tensions have escalated in the Persian Gulf since May, when the U.S. stepped up its military presence in the region in response to what it called indications of a "credible threat” by Iranian forces.
On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif hit out at the U.S. for "harassing” ships in international waters and "preventing freedom of navigation.”
Zarif said Iran did not want war with the United States but warned that a ramped-up Western naval presence in the Persian Gulf increased the risk of accidents which analysts say could spark a wider confrontation.
"We do not seek military confrontation,” Zarif said. "But it is clear bringing naval vessels to the Persian Gulf… will not increase security… but the possibility of accidents and incidents.”
The New York Times reported on Friday that the nuclear-powered USS Abraham Lincoln does not venture near Iranian waters, despite a warning from President Donald Trump's national security adviser that the warship is in the Middle East "to send a clear and unmistakable message" to Iran.
In the past four months, the ship has entered neither the Persian Gulf nor the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil-tanker highways it is supposed to protect, the paper said.
The Lincoln, it said, remains in the North Arabian Sea and at times more than 600 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Often, the carrier is off the coast of Oman, not far from Muscat.
"The men who populate Iran's southern beaches need not worry about seeing the Lincoln on the horizon,” the paper said.